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LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND COPIES 
PRINTED FOR SUBSCRIBERS 



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the Estate Of M/ssRm.kc, 

'ss Ruth Putnam 



CONTENTS 

Biography of Dickens, by Leslie Stephen ... 1 

CHAPTER I 

The lottery of education; Charles Dickens born 
February 7, 1812; his pathetic feeling towards 
his own childhood; happy days at Chatham; 
family troubles; similarity between little 
Charles and David Copperfield; John Dickens 
taken to the Marshalsea; his character; Charles 
employed in blacking business; over-sensitive 
in after years about this episode in his career; 
isolation; is brought back into family and 
prison circle; family in comparative comfort 
at the Marshalsea; father released; Charles 
leaves the blacking business; his mother; he is 
sent to Wellington House Academy in 1824; 
character of that place of learning; Dickens 
masters its humours thoroughly 49 

CHAPTER II 

Dickens becomes a solicitor's clerk in 1827; then a 
reporter; his experiences in that capacity; 
first story published in The Old Monthly Mag- 
azine for January, 1834; writes more 
Sketches; power of minute observation thus 



iv CONTENTS 

early shown; masters the writer's art; is paid 
for his contributions to the Chronicle; marries 
Miss Hogarth on April 2, 1836; appearance at 
that date; power of physical endurance; ad- 
mirable influence of his peculiar education; and 
its drawbacks 72 

CHAPTER III 

Origin of Pickwick; Seymour's part therein; 
first number published on April 1, 1836; early 
numbers not a success; suddenly the book be- 
comes the rage; English literature just then in 
want of its novelist; Dickens's kingship ac- 
knowledged; causes of the book's popularity; 
its admirable humour and other excellent qual- 
ities ; Sam Weller ; Mr. Pickwick himself ; book 
read by everybody 90 

CHAPTER IV 

Dickens works "double tides" from 1836 to 1839; 
appointed editor of Bentley's Miscellany at be- 
ginning of 1837, and commences Oliver Twist; 
Quarterly Review predicts his speedy down- 
fall; pecuniary position at this time; moves 
from Furnival's Inn to Doughty Street; death 
of his sister-in-law Mary Hogarth; his friend- 
ships; absence of all jealousy in his character; 
habits of work; riding and pedestrianizing ; 
walking in London streets necessary to the ex- 
ercise of his art 102 



CONTENTS V 

CHAPTER V 

Oliver Twist; analysis of the book; doubtful prob- 
ability of Oliver's character; Nicholas Nick- 
lehy; its wealth of character; Master Hum- 
phrey's Clock projected and begun in April, 
1840; the public disappointed in its expecta- 
tions of a novel; Old Curiosity Shop com- 
menced, and miscellaneous portion of Master 
Humphrey's Clock dropped; Dickens's fond- 
ness for taking a child as his hero or heroine; 
Little Nell; tears shed over her sorrows; gen- 
eral admiration for the pathos of her story; 
is such admiration altogether deserved? Paul 
Dombey more natural; Little Nell's death too 
declamatory as a piece of writing; Dickens 
nevertheless a master of pathos; Barnaby 
Rudge; a historical novel dealing with times of 
the Gordon riots 112 

CHAPTER VI 

Dickens starts for United States in January, 1842; 
had been splendidly received a little before at 
Edinburgh; why he went to the United States; 
is enthusiastically welcomed; at first he is en- 
chanted; then expresses the greatest disap- 
pointment; explanation of the change; what 
the Americans thought of him; American 
Notes; his views modified on his second visit to 
America in 1867-8; takes to fierce private the- 
atricals for rest; delight of the children on his 
return to England; an admirable father . .132 



vi CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VII 

Dickens again at work and play; publication of 
Martin Chuzzlewit begun in January, 1843; 
plot not Dickens's strong point; this not of any 
vital consequence; a novel not really remem- 
bered by its story; Dickens's books often have 
a higher unity than that of plot; selfishness 
the central idea of Martin Chuzzlewit; a great 
book, and yet not at the time successful; Dick- 
ens foresees money embarrassments; publishes 
the admirable Christmas Carol at Christmas, 
1843; and determines to go for a space to 
Italy 150 

CHAPTER VIII 

Journey through France ; Genoa ; the Italy of 1 844 ; 
Dickens charmed with its untidy picturesque- 
ness; he is idle for a few weeks; his palace at 
Genoa; he sets to work upon The Chimes; gets 
passionately interested in the little book; 
travels through Italy to read it to his friends 
in London; reads it on December 2, 1844; is 
soon back again in Italy; returns to London in 
the summer of 1845; on January 21, 1846, 
starts The Daily News; holds the post of edi- 
tor three weeks; Pictures from Italy first pub- 
lished in Daily News 162 

CHAPTER IX 

Dickens as an amateur actor and stage-manager; 
he goes to Lausanne in May, 1846, and begins 



CONTENTS vii 

Dombey; has great difficulty in getting on with- 
out streets; the Battle of Life written; Dom- 
hey; its pathos; pride the subject of the book; 
reality of the characters ; Dickens's treatment 
of partial insanity; M. Taine's false criticism 
thereon; Dickens in Paris in the winter of 
1846-7; private theatricals again; the Haunted 
Man; David Copperfeld begun in May, 1849; 
it marks the culminating point in Dickens's 
career as a writer; Household Words started 
on March 30, 1850; character of that periodi- 
cal and its successor. All the Year Round; do- 
mestic sorrows cloud the opening of the year 
1851; Dickens moves in same year from Dev- 
onshire Terrace to Tavistock House, and be- 
gins Bleak House; story of the novel ; its Chan- 
cery episodes; Dickens is overworked and ill, 
and finds pleasant quarters at Boulogne . .174 

CHAPTER X 

Dickens gives his first public (not paid) readings in 
December, 1853; was it infra dig. that he 
should read for money? he begins his paid 
readings in April, 1858; reasons for their suc- 
cess; care bestowed on them by the reader; 
their dramatic character; Carlyle's opinion of 
them; how the tones of Dickens's voice linger 
in the memory of one who heard him . . . 200 

CHAPTER XI 

Hard Times commenced in Household Words for 
April 1, 1854; it is an attack on the "hard 



viii CONTENTS 

fact " school of philosophers ; what Macaulay 
and Mr. Ruskin thought of it; the Russian 
war of 1854-5, and the cry for " Administra- 
tive Reform " ; Dickens in the thick of the 
movement; Little Dorrit and the Circumlocu- 
tion O^cej character of Mr. Dorrit admirably 
drawn; Dickens is in Paris from December, 
1855, to May, 1856; he buys Gad's Hill Place; 
it becomes his hobby; unfortunate relations 
with his wife; and separation in May, 1858; 
lying rumours; how these stung Dickens 
through his honourable pride in the love which 
the public bore him; he publishes an indignant 
protest in Household Words; and writes an un- 
justifiable letter 207 



CHAPTER XII 

The Tale of Two Cities, a story of the great Frendi 
Revolution; Phiz's connection with Dickens's 
works comes to an end; his art and that of 
Cruikshank; both too essentially caricatur- 
ists of an old school to be permanently the 
illustrators of Dickens; other illustrators; 
Great Expectations; its story and characters; 
Our Mutual Friend begun in May, 1864; a 
complicated narrative; Dickens's extraordinary 
sympathy for Eugene Wrayburn; generally 
his sympathies are so entirely right; which ex- 
plains why his books are not vtilgar; he him- 
self a man of great real refinement .... 225 



CONTENTS ix 

CHAPTER XIII 

Dickens's health begins to fail; he is much shaken 
by an accident in June, 1865; but bates no jot 
of his high courage, and works on at his read- 
ings; sails for America on a reading tour in 
November, 1867; is wretchedly ill, and yet 
continues to read day after day; comes back 
to England, and reads on; health failing more 
and more; reading has to be abandoned for a 
time; begins to write his last and unfinished 
book, Edwin Droodj except health all seems 
well with him; on June 8, 1870, he works at 
his book nearly all day ; at dinner time is struck 
down; dies on the following day, June the 9th; 
is buried in Westminster Abbey among his 
peers; nor will his fame suffer eclipse . . . 239 

Index 259 



Biography of Charles Dickens 

By Leslie Stephen 

Charles Dickens (1812-1870), novelist, was 
bom 7 February, 1812, at 387 Mile End Ter- 
race, Commercial Road, Landport, Port- 
sea. His father, John Dickens, a clerk 
in the navy pay office, with a salary of 
80Z. a year, was then stationed in the Ports- 
mouth dockyard. The wife of the first Lord 
Houghton told Mr. Wemyss Reid that Mrs. 
Dickens, mother of John, was housekeeper 
at Crewe, and famous for her powers of 
story-telling (Wemyss Reid, in Daily News, 
8 October, 1887). John Dickens had eight 
children by his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of 
Charles Barrow, a lieutenant in the navy. The 
eldest, Fanny, was born in 1810, Charles, the 
second, was christened Charles John Huffman 
(erroneously entered Huff ham in the register) , 
but dropped the last two names. Charles 
Dickens remembered the little garden of the 
house at Portsea, though his father was re- 
called to London when he was only two years 



2 LIFE OF 

old. In 1816 (probably) the family moved 
to Chatham. Dickens was small and sickly ; he 
amused himself by reading and watching the 
games of other boys. His mother taught him 
his letters, and he pored over a small collection 
of books belonging to his father. Among 
them were Tom Jones, the Vicar of Wake- 
field, Don Quixote, Gil Bias, and especially 
Smollett's novels, by which he was deeply im- 
pressed. He wrote an infantine tragedy 
called Misnar, founded on the Tales of the 
Genii. James Lamert, the stepson of his 
mother's eldest sister, Mary (whose second 
husband was Dr. Lamert, an army surgeon at 
Chatham) , had a taste for private theatricals. 
Lamert took Dickens to the theatre, in which 
the child greatly delighted. John Dickens's 
salary was raised to 200/. in 1819, and to 350Z. 
in 1820, at which amount it remained until he 
left the service, 9 March, 1825. It was, how- 
ever, made insufficient by his careless habits, 
and in 1821 he left his first house, 2 (now 11) 
Ordnance Terrace, for a smaller house, 18 St. 
Mary's Place, next to a Baptist chapel. 
Dickens was then sent to school with the 
minister, Mr. Giles (see Langton, Childhood 
of Dickens). In the winter of 1822-3 his 



CHARLES DICKENS 3 

father was recalled to Somerset House, and 
settled in Bayham Street, Camden Town, 
whither his son followed in the spring. John 
Dickens, whose character is more or less repre- 
sented by Micawber, was now in difficulties, 
and had to make a composition with his 
creditors. He was (as Dickens emphatically 
stated) a very affectionate father, and took a 
pride in his son's precocious talents. Yet at 
this time (according to the same statement), 
he was entirely forgetful of the son's claims 
to a decent education. In spite of the family 
difficulties, the eldest child, Fanny, was sent 
as a pupil to the Royal Academy of Music, 
but Charles was left to black his father's boots, 
look after the younger children, and do small 
errands. Lamert made a little theatre for the 
child's amusement. His mother's elder brother, 
Thomas Barrow, and a godfather, took notice 
of him occasionally. The uncle lodged in the 
upper floor of a house in which a bookselling 
business was carried on, and the proprietress 
lent the child some books. His literary tastes 
were kept alive, and he tried his hand at writing 
a description of the uncle's barber. His 
mother now made an attempt to retrieve the 
family fortunes by taking a house, 4 Gower 



4 LIFE OF 

Street North, where a brass plate announced 
' Mrs. Dickens's Establishment,' but failed to 
attract any pupils. The father was at last 
arrested and carried to the Marshalsea, long 
afterwards described in Little Dorrit. (Mr. 
Langton thinks that the prison was the King's 
Bench, where, as he says, there was a prisoner 
named Dorrett in 1824.) All the books and 
furniture went gradually to the pawnbroker's. 
James Lamert had become manager of a 
blacking warehouse, and obtained a place for 
Dickens at 6s. or 7s. a week in the office at 
Hungerford Stairs. Dickens was treated as a 
mere drudge, and employed in making up par- 
cels. He came home at night to the dismantled 
house in Gower Street till the family followed 
the father to the Marshalsea, and then lodged 
in Camden Town with a reduced old lady, a 
Mrs. Roylance, the original of Mrs. Pipchin 
in Dombey and Son. Another lodging was 
found for him near the prison with a family 
which is represented by the Garlands in his 
Old Curiosity Shop. The Dickenses were 
rather better off in prison than they had been 
previously. The maid-of-all-work who fol- 
lowed them from Bayham Street became the 
Marchioness of the Old Curiosity Shop. 



CHARLES DICKENS 5 

The elder Dickens at last took the benefit of 
the Insolvent Debtors Act, and moved first to 
Mrs. Roylance's house, and then to a house in 
Somers Town. Dickens's amazing faculty of 
observation is proved by the use made in his 
novels of all that he now saw, especially in the 
prison scenes of Pickwick and in the earlier 
part of David Coppei'field. That he suffered 
acutely is proved by the singular bitterness 
shown in his own narrative printed by Forster. 
He felt himself degraded by his occupation. 
When his sister won a prize at the Royal 
Academy he was deeply humiliated by the 
contrast of his own position, though incapable 
of envying her success. This was about April, 
1824. 

The family circumstances improved. The 
elder Dickens had received a legacy, which 
helped to clear off his debts ; he had a pension, 
and after some time he obtained employment as 
reporter to the Morning Chronicle. About 
1824 Dickens was sent to a school kept by a 
Mr. Jones in the Hampstead Road, and called 
the Wellington House Academy. His health 
improved. His school- fellows remembered him 
as a handsome lad, overflowing with animal 
spirits, writing stories, getting up little theat- 



6 LIFE OF 

rical performances, and fond of harmless 
practical jokes, but not distinguishing himself 
as a scholar. After two j^ears at this school, 
Dickens went to another kept by a Mr. Daw- 
son in Henrietta Street, Brunswick Square. 
He then became clerk in the office of Mr. Mol- 
loy in New Square, Lincoln's Inn, and soon 
afterwards (from May, 1827, to November, 
1828) , clerk in the office of Mr. Edward Black- 
more, attorney, of Gray's Inn. His salary 
with Mr. Blackmore rose from 135. Gd. to 155. 
a week. Dickens's energy had only been stim- 
ulated by the hardships through which he had 
passed. He was determined to force his way 
upwards. He endeavoured to supplement his 
scanty education by reading at the British 
Museum, and he studied shorthand writing in 
the fashion described in David Copperfield, 
Copperfield's youthful passion for Dora re- 
flects a passion of the same kind in Dickens's 
own career, which, though hopeless, stimulated 
his ambition. He became remarkably expert 
in shorthand, and after two years' reporting in 
the Doctors' Commons and other courts, he 
entered the gallery of the House of Commons 
as reporter to the True Sun. He was spokes- 
man for the reporters in a successful strike. 



CHARLES DICKENS 7 

For two sessions he reported for the Mirror 
of Parliament, started by a maternal uncle, 
and in the session of 1835 became reporter for 
the Morning Chronicle. While still report- 
ing at Doctors' Commons he had thoughts of 
becoming an actor. He made an application 
to George Bartley, manager at Co vent Gar- 
den, which seems to have only missed accept- 
ance by an accident, and took great pains to 
practise the art. He finally abandoned this 
scheme on obtaining his appointment on the 
Morning Chronicle (Forster ii., 179). His 
powers were rapidly developed by the require- 
ments of his occupation. He was, as he says 
(Letters J i. 438) , ' the best and most rapid re- 
porter ever known.' He had to hurry to and 
from country meetings, by coach and post- 
chaise, encountering all the adventures incident 
to travelling in the days before railroads, mak- 
ing arrangements for forwarding reports, and 
attracting the notice of his employers by his 
skill, resource, and energy. John Black, the 
editor, became a warm friend and was, he says, 
his ' first hearty out-and-out appreciator.' 

He soon began to write in the periodicals. 
The appearance of his first article, A Dinner 
at Poplar Walk (reprinted as Mr, Minn^ 



8 LIFE OF 

and his Cousin), in the Monthly Magazine 
for December, 1833, filled him with exultation. 
Nine others followed till February, 1835. The 
paper in August, 1834, first bore the signature 
' Boz.' It was the pet name of his youngest 
brother, Augustus, called * Moses,' after the 
boy in the Vicar of Wakefield^ which was 
corrupted into Boses and Boz. An Evening 
Chronicle as an appendix to the Morning 
Chronicle, was started in 1835 under the 
management of George Hogarth, formerly a 
friend of Scott. The Monthly Magazine 
was unable to pay for the sketches, and 
Dickens now offered to continue his sketches 
in the new venture. His offer was accepted, 
and his salary raised from five to seven guineas 
a week. In the spring of 1836 the collected 
papers were published as Sketches by Boz, 
with illustrations by Cruikshank, the copy- 
right being bought for 150/. by a publisher 
named Macrone. On 2 April, 1836, Dickens 
married Catherine, eldest daughter of Ho- 
garth, his colleague on the Morning Chroni- 
cle. He had just begun the Pickwick 
Papers. The Sketches, in which it is now 
easy to see the indications of future success, 
had attracted some notice in their original 



CHARLES DICKENS 9 

form. Albany Fonblanque had warmly 
praised them, and publishers heard of the 
young writer. Messrs. Chapman & Hall, then 
beginning business, had published a book 
called The Squib Annual in November, 
1835, with illustrations by Seymour. Seymour 
was anxious to produce a series of * cockney 
sporting plates.' Chapman & Hall thought 
that it might answer to publish such a series 
in monthly parts accompanied by letterpress. 
Hall applied to Dickens, suggesting the in- 
vention of a Nimrod Club, the members of 
which should get into comic difficulties suitable 
for Seymour's illustrations. Dickens, wishing 
for a freer hand, and having no special knowl- 
edge of sport, substituted the less restricted 
scheme of the Pickwick Club, and wrote the 
first number, for which Seymour drew the 
illustrations. The first two or three numbers 
excited less attention than the collected 
Sketches, which had just appeared. Seymour 
killed himself before the appearance of the 
second number. Robert William Buss illus- 
trated the third number. Thackeray, then 
an unknown youth, applied to Dickens for the 
post of illustrator; but Dickens finally chose 
Hablot Knight Browne, who illustrated the 



10 LIFE OF 

fourth and all the subsequent numbers, as well 
as many of the later novels. 

The success of Pickwick soon became ex- 
traordinary. The binder prepared four hun- 
dred copies of the first number, and forty 
thousand of the fifteenth. The marked success 
began with the appearance of Sam Weller in 
the fifth number. Sam Weller is in fact the 
incarnation of the qualities to which the suc- 
cess was due. Educated like his creator in the 
streets of London, he is the ideal cockney. His 
exuberant animal spirits, humorous shrewd- 
ness, and kindliness under a mask of broad 
farce, made him the favourite of all cockneys 
in and out of London, and took the gravest 
readers by storm. All that Dickens had learnt 
in his rough initiation into life, with a power 
of observation unequalled in its way, was 
poured out with boundless vivacity and prodi- 
gality of invention. The book, beginning as 
farce, became admirable comedy, and has 
caused more hearty and harmless laughter than 
any book in the language. If Dickens's later 
works surpassed Pickwick in some ways, 
Pickwick shows in their highest develop- 
ment the qualities in which he most surpassed 
other writers. Sam Weller's peculiar trick of 



CHARLES DICKENS 11 

speech has been traced with probabihty to 
Samuel Vale, a popular comic actor, who in 
1822 performed Simon Spatterdash in a farce 
called The Boarding House, and gave cur- 
rency to a similar phraseology. {Notes and 
Queries, 6th ser. v. 388; and Origin of Sam 
Weller, with a facsimile of a contemporary 
piratical imitation of Pickwick, 1883.) 

Dickens was now a prize for which pub- 
lishers might contend. In the next few years 
he undertook a great deal of work, with con- 
fidence natural to a buoyant temperament, en- 
couraged by unprecedented success, and 
achieved new triumphs without permitting 
himself to fall into slovenly composition. Each 
new book was at least as carefully written as 
its predecessor. Pickwick appeared from 
April, 1836, to November, 1837. Oliver 
Twist began while Pickwick was still pro- 
ceeding, in January, 1837, and ran till March, 
1839. Nicholas Nicklehy overlapped Oliver 
Twist, beginning in April, 1838, and ending 
in October, 1839. In February, 1838, Dickens 
went to Yorkshire to look at the schools carica- 
tured in Dotheboys Hall. (For the original of 
Dotheboys Hall see Notes and Queries, 4th 
ser. vi. 245, and 5th ser. iii. 325.) A short 



12 LIFE OF 

pause followed. Dickens had thought of a 
series of papers, more or less on the model of 
the old Spectator^ in which there was to be a 
club, including the Wellers, varied essays sa- 
tirical and descriptive, and occasional stories. 
The essays were to appear weekly, and for the 
whole he finally selected the title Master 
Humphrey's Clock. The plan was carried 
out with modifications. It appeared at once 
that the stories were the popular part of the 
series; the club and the intercalated essay dis- 
appeared, and Master Humphrey's Clock 
resolved itself into the two stories. The Old 
Curiosity Shop, and Barnahy Rudge. Dur- 
ing 1840 and 1841 Oliver Twist seems to 
have been at first less popular than its fellow- 
stories; but Nicholas Nickleby surpassed 
even Pickwick. Sydney Smith on read- 
ing it confessed that Dickens had ' con- 
quered him,* though he had ' stood out as long 
as he could.' Master Humphrey's Clock 
began with a sale of seventy thousand copies, 
which declined when there was no indication 
of a continuous story, but afterwards revived. 
The Old Curiosity Shop, as republished, made 
an extraordinary success. Barnahy Rudge 
has apparently never been equally popular. 



CHARLES DICKENS 13 

The exuberant animal spirits, and the amaz- 
ing fertility in creating comic types, which 
made the fortune of Pickwick, were now 
combined with a more continuous story. The 
ridicule of Bumbledom in Oliver Twist, 
and of Yorkshire schools in Nicholas Nick- 
lehy, showed the power of satirical portrai- 
ture already displayed in the prison scenes of 
Pickwick. The humourist is not yet lost in the 
satirist, and the extravagance of the caricature 
is justified by its irresistible fun. Dickens 
was also showing the command of the pathetic 
which fascinated the ordinary reader. The 
critic is apt to complain that Dickens kills his 
children as if he liked it, and makes his vic- 
tims attitudinize before the footlights. Yet 
Landor, a severe critic, thought ' Little Nell ' 
equal to any character in fiction, and Jeffrey, 
the despiser of sentimentalism, declared that 
there had been nothing so good since Cordelia 
(Forster, i. 177, 226). Dickens had written 
with sincere feeling, and with thoughts of 
Mary Hogarth, his wife's sister, whose death 
in 1837 had profoundly affected him, and 
forced him to suspend the publication of 
Pickwick (no number was published in June, 
1837). When we take into account the com- 



14 LIFE OF 

mand of the horrible shown by the murder in 
Oliver Twisty and the unvarying vivacity and 
brilhance of style, the secret of Dickens's hold 
upon his readers is tolerably clear. Barnahy 
Rudge is remarkable as an attempt at the 
historical novel, repeated only in his Tale of 
Two Cities; but Dickens takes little pains to 
give genuine local colour, and appears to have 
regarded the eighteenth century chiefly as the 
reign of Jack Ketch. 

Dickens's fame had attracted acquaintances, 
many of whom were converted by his genial 
qualities into fast friends. In March, 1837, 
he moved from the chambers in Furnival's 
Inn, which he had occupied for some time 
previous to his marriage, to 48 Doughty Street, 
and towards the end of 1839 he moved to a 
' handsome house with a considerable garden ' 
in Devonshire Terrace, facing York Gate, 
Regent's Park. He spent summer holidays at 
Broadstairs, always a favourite watering-place, 
Twickenham, and Petersham, and in the sum- 
mer of 1841 made an excursion in Scotland, 
received the freedom of Edinburgh, and was 
welcomed at a public dinner where Jeffrey took 
the chair and his health was proposed by 
Christopher North. He was at this time fond 



CHARLES DICKENS 15 

of long rides, and delighted in boyish games. 
His buoyant spirit and hearty good-nature 
made him a charming host and guest at social 
gatherings of all kinds except the formal. He 
speedily became known to most of his literary 
contemporaries, such as Landor (whom he 
visited at Bath in 1841), Talfourd, Procter, 
Douglas Jerrold, Harrison Ains worth, Wil- 
kie, and Edwin Landseer. His closest inti- 
mates were Macready, Maclise, Stanfield, and 
John Forster. Forster had seen him at the 
office of the True Sun, and had afterwards 
met him at the house of Harrison Ainsworth. 
They had become intimate at the time of Mary 
Hogarth's death, when Forster visited him, on 
his temporary retirement, at Hampstead. 
Forster, whom he afterwards chose as his 
biographer, was serviceable both by reading 
his works before publication and by helping 
his business arrangements. 

Dickens made at starting some rash agree- 
ments. Chapman & Hall had given him 15/. 
15s. a number for Pickwick, with additional 
payments dependent upon the sale. He re- 
ceived, Forster thinks, 2,500Z. on the whole. 
He had also, with Chapman & Hall, rebought 
for 2,000Z. in 1837 the copyright of the 



16 LIFE OF 

Sketches sold to Macrone in 1831 for 150Z. 
The success of Pickwick had raised the 
value of the book, and Macrone proposed to 
reissue it simultaneously with Pickwick and 
Oliver Twist. Dickens thought that this 
superabundance would be injurious to his 
reputation, and naturally considered Macrone 
to be extortionate. When, however, Macrone 
died, two years later, Dickens edited the Pic- 
Nic Papers (1841) for the benefit of the 
widow, contributing the preface and a story 
which was made out of his farce The Lamp- 
lighter. In November, 1837, Chapman & 
Hall agreed that he should have a share after 
five years in the copyright of Pickwick on 
condition that he should write a similar book, 
for which he was to receive 3,000Z., besides 
having the whole copyright after five years. 
Upon the success of Nicholas Nicklehy, writ- 
ten in fulfilment of this agreement, the pub- 
lishers paid him an additional 1,500Z. in con- 
sideration of a further agreement, carried out 
by Master Humphrey's Clock. Dickens was 
to receive 50Z. for each weekly number, and to 
have half the profits; the copyright to be 
equally shared after five years. He had mean- 
while agreed with Richard Bentley (1794- 



CHARLES DICKENS 17 

1871) (22 August, 1836) to edit a new maga- 
zine from January, 1837, to which he was to 
supply a story; and had further agreed to 
write two other stories for the same pubKsher. 
Oliver Twist appeared in Bentley's Miscel- 
lany in accordance with the first agreement, 
and, on the conclusion of the story, he 
handed over the editorship to Harrison Ains- 
worth. In September, 1837, after some mis- 
understandings, it was agreed to abandon one 
of the novels promised to Bentley, Dickens 
undertaking to finish the other, Barnahy 
Rudge, by November, 1838. In June, 1840, 
Dickens bought the copyright of Oliver 
Twist from Bentley for 2,250/.^ and the agree- 
ment for Barnahy Budge was cancelled. 
Dickens then sold Barnahy Budge to Chap- 
man & Hall, receiving 3,000Z. for the use of the 
copyright until six months after the publica- 
tion of the last number. The close of this 
series of agreements freed him from conflict- 
ing and harassing responsibilities. 

The weekly appearance of Master Hum- 
yhrey's Clock had imposed a severe strain. He 
agreed in August, 1841, to write a new novel 
in the Pickwick form, for which he was to 
receive 200Z. a month for twenty numbers, be- 



18 LIFE OF 

sides three-fourths of the profits. He stipu- 
lated, however, in order to secure the much 
needed rest, that it should not begin until Nov- 
ember, 1842. During the previous twelve 
months he was to receive 1501. a month, to be 
deducted from his share of the profits. When 
first planning Master Humphrey's Clock 
he had talked of visiting America to obtain 
materials for descriptive papers. The pub- 
lication of The Old Curiosity Shop had 
brought him a letter from Washington Irving ; 
his fame had spread beyond the Atlantic, and 
he resolved to spend part of the interval before 
his next book in the United States. He had a 
severe illness in the autumn of 1841 ; he had to 
undergo a surgical operation, and was sad- 
dened by the sudden death of his wife's brother 
and mother. 

He sailed from Liverpool 4 January, 
1842. He reached Boston on 21 January, 
1842, and travelled by New York and Phila- 
delphia to Washington and Richmond. Re- 
turning to Baltimore, he started for the West, 
and went by Pittsburg, and Cincinnati, to St. 
Louis. He returned to Cincinnati, and by the 
end of April was at the falls of Niagara. He 
spent a month in Canada, performing in some 



CHARLES DICKENS 19 

private theatricals at Montreal, and sailed for 
England about the end of May. The Ameri- 
cans received him with an enthusiasm which 
was at times overpowering, but which was soon 
mixed with less agreeable feelings. Dickens 
had come prepared to advocate international 
copyright, though he emphatically denied, in 
answer to an article by James Spedding in the 
Edinburgh Review for January, 1843, that 
he had gone as a ' missionary ' in that cause. 
His speeches on this subject met with little 
response, and the general opinion was in favour 
of continuing to steal. As a staunch abolition- 
ist he was shocked by the sight of slavery, and 
disgusted by the general desire in the free 
States to suppress any discussion of the dan- 
gerous topic. To the average Englishman the 
problem seemed a simple question of elemen- 
tary morality. Dickens's judgment of America 
was in fact that of the average Englishman, 
whose radicalism increased his disappointment 
at the obvious weaknesses of the republic. He 
differed from ordinary observers only in the 
decisiveness of his utterances and in the as- 
tonishing vivacity of his impressions. The 
Americans were still provincial enough to 
fancy that the first impressions of a young 



20 LIFE OF 

novelist were really of importance. Their 
serious faults and the superficial roughness of 
the half-settled districts thoroughly disgusted 
him; and though he strove hard to do justice to 
their good qualities, it is clear that he returned 
disillusioned and heartily disliking the country. 
The feeling is still shown in his antipathy to 
the Northern States during the war {Letters, 
ii. 203, 204). In the American Notes, pub- 
lished in October, 1842, he wrote under con- 
straint upon some topics, but gave careful ac- 
counts of the excellent institutions which are 
the terror of the ordinary tourist in America. 
Four large editions were sold by the end of the 
year, and the book produced a good deal of 
resentment. When Macready visited America 
in the autumn of 1843, Dickens refused to 
accompany him to Liverpool, thinking that the 
actor would be injured by any indications of 
friendship with the author of the Notes and 
of Martin Chuzzlewit. 

The first of the twenty monthly numbers 
of this novel appeared in January, 1843. The 
book shows Dickens at his highest power. 
Whether it has done much to enforce its in- 
tended moral, that selfishness is a bad thing, 
may be doubted. But the humour and the 



CHARLES DICKENS 21 

tragic power are undeniable. Pecksniff and 
Mrs. Gamp at once became recognised types of 
character, and the American scenes, revealing 
Dickens's real impressions, are perhaps the 
most surprising proof of his unequalled power 
of seizing characteristics at a glance. Yet for 
some reason the sale was comparatively small, 
never exceeding twenty-three thousand copies, 
as against the seventy thousand of Master 
Humphrey's Clock. 

After Dickens's return to England, his sis- 
ter-in-law, Miss Georgina Hogarth, became, as 
she remained till his death, an inmate of his 
household. He made an excursion to Corn- 
wall in the autumn of 1842 with Maclise, 
Stanfield, and Forster, in the highest spirits, 
' choking and gasping, and bursting the buckle 
off the back of his stock (with laughter) all 
the way.' He spent his summers chiefly at 
Broadstairs, and took a leading part in many 
social gatherings and dinners to his friends. 
He showed also a lively interest in benevolent 
enterprises, especially in ragged schools. In 
this and similar work he was often associated 
with Miss Coutts, afterwards Baroness Bur- 
dett-Coutts, and in later years he gave much 
time to the management of a house for fallen 



22 LIFE OF 

women established by her in Shepherd's Bush. 
He was always ready to throw himself heartily 
into any philanthropical movement, and rather 
slow to see any possibility of honest objection. 
His impatience of certain difficulties about the 
ragged schools raised by clergymen of the Es- 
tablished Church led him for a year or two to 
join the congregation of a Unitarian minister, 
Mr. Edward Tagart. For the rest of his life 
his sympathies, we are told, were chiefly with 
the Church of England, as the least sectarian 
of religious bodies, and he seems to have held 
that every Dissenting minister was a Stiggins. 
It is curious that the favourite author of the 
middle classes should have been so hostile to 
their favourite form of belief. 

The relatively small sale of Chuzzlewit 
led to difficulties with his publishers. The 
Christmas Carol, which appeared at Christ- 
mas, 1843, was the first of five similar books 
which have been enormously popular, as none 
of his books give a more explicit statement of 
what he held to be the true gospel of the cen- 
tury. He was, however, greatly disappointed 
with the commercial results. Fifteen thousand 
copies were sold, and brought him only 726/.^ 
a result apparently due to the too costly form 



CHARLES DICKENS 23 

in which they were pubhshed. Dickens ex- 
pressed a dissatisfaction, which resulted in a 
breach with Messrs. Chapman & Hall and an 
agreement with Messrs. Bradbury & Evans, 
who were to advance 2,800/. and have a fourth 
share of all his writings for the next eight 
years. Dickens's irritation under these worries 
stimulated his characteristic restlessness. He 
had many claims to satisfy. His family was 
rapidly increasing; his fifth child was born at 
the beginning of 1844. Demands from more 
distant relations were also frequent, and 
though he received what, for an author, was a 
very large income, he thought that he had 
worked chiefly for the enrichment of others. 
He also felt the desire to obtain wider ex- 
perience natural to one who had been drawing 
so freely upon his intellectual resources. He 
resolved, therefore, to economize and refresh 
his mind in Italy. 

Before starting he presided, in February, 
1844, at the meetings of the Mechanics' Insti- 
tution in Liverpool and the Poljrtechnic in 
Birmingham. He wrote some radical articles 
in the Morning Chronicle. After the usual 
farewell dinner at Greenwich, where J. M. W. 
Turner attended and Lord Normanby took the 



24 LIFE OF 

chair, he started for Italy, reaching Marseilles 
14 July, 1844. On 16 July he settled in a villa 
at Albaro, a suburb of Genoa, and set to work 
learning Italian. He afterwards moved to the 
Peschiere Palace in Genoa. There, though 
missing his long night walks in London streets, 
he wrote the Chimes, and came back to London 
to read it to his friends. He started 6 Nov- 
ember, travelled through northern Italy, and 
reached London at the end of the month. He 
read the Chimes at Forster's house to Car- 
lyle, Stanfield, Maclise, Lemon, Blanchard, 
Douglas Jerrold, Fox, Harness, and Dyce. 
He then returned to Genoa. In the middle of 
January he started with his wife on a journey 
to Rome, Naples, and Florence. He returned 
to Genoa for two months and then crossed to 
St. Gothard, and returned to England at the 
end of June, 1845. On coming home he took 
up a scheme for a private theatrical perform- 
ance, which had been started on the night of 
reading the Chimes. He threw himself into this 
with his usual vigour. Jonson's Every Man in 
his Humour was performed on 21 September 
at Fanny Kemble's theatre in Dean Street. 
Dickens took the part of Bobadil, Forster ap- 
pearing as Kitely, Jerrold as Master Stephen, 



CHARLES DICKENS 25 

and Leach as Master Matthew. The play suc- 
ceeded to admiration, and a public performance 
was afterwards given for a charity. Dickens 
is said by Forster to have been a very vivid and 
versatile rather than a finished actor, but an 
inimitable manager. 

His contributions to the Morning Chronicle 
seem to have suggested his next undertaking, 
the only one in which he can be said to have 
decidedly failed. He became first editor of 
the Daily News, the first number of which 
appeared 21 January, 1846. He had not the 
necessary qualifications for the function of 
editor of a political organ. On 9 February 
he resigned his post, to which Forster suc- 
ceeded for a time. He continued to con- 
tribute for about three months longer, pub- 
lishing a series of letters descriptive of his 
Italian journeys. His most remarkable con- 
tribution was a series of letters on capital 
punishment. (For the fullest account of his 
editorship, see Ward, pp. 68-74.) He then 
gave up the connection, resolving to pass the 
next twelve months in Switzerland, and there 
to write another book on the old model. He 
left England on 31 May, having previously 
made a rather singular overture to government 



26 LIFE OF 

for an appointment to the paid magistracy of 
London, and having also taken a share in 
starting the General Theatrical Fund. He 
reached Lausanne 11 June, 1846, and took a 
house called Rosemont. Here he enjoyed the 
scenery and surrounded himself with a circle 
of friends, some of whom became his intimates 
through life. He specially liked the Swiss 
people. He now began Domhey, and 
worked at it vigorously, though feeling occa- 
sionally his oddly characteristic craving for 
streets. The absence of streets ' worried ' him 
' in a most singular manner,' and he was 
harassed by having on hand both Domhey 
and his next Christmas book, The Battle of 
Life. For a partial remedy of the first evil he 
made a short stay at Geneva at the end of 
September. The Battle of Life was at last 
completed, and he was cheered by the success 
of the first numbers of Domhey. In Novem- 
ber he started for Paris, where he stayed for 
three months. He made a visit to London in 
December, when he arranged for a cheap issue 
of his writings, which began in the following 
year. He was finally brought back to England 
by an illness of his eldest son, then at King's 
College School. His house in Devonshire Ter- 



CHARLES DICKENS 27 

race was still let to a tenant, and he did not re- 
turn tliere until September, 1847. Dombeij 
and Son had a brilliant success. The first five 
numbers, with the death, truly or falsely pa- 
thetic, of Paul Dombey, were among his most 
striking pieces of work, and the book has had 
great popularitjr, though it afterwards took 
him into the kind of social satire in which he 
was always least successful. For the first half- 
year he received nearly 3,000Z., and henceforth 
his pecuniary affairs were prosperous and sav- 
ings began. He found time during its com- 
pletion for gratifying on a large scale his 
passion for theatrical performances. In 1847 
a scheme was started for the benefit of Leigh 
Hunt. Dickens became manager of a company 
which performed Jonson's comedy at Man- 
chester and Liverpool in July, 1847, and added 
four hundred guineas to the benefit fund. In 
1848 it was proposed to buy Shakespeare's 
house at Stratford-on-Avon and to endow a 
curatorship to be held by Sheridan Knowles. 
Though this part of the scheme dropped, the 
projected performances were given for 
Knowles's benefit. The Merry Wives of 
Windsorj in which Dickens played Shallow, 
Lemon Falstaif, and Forster blaster Ford, 



28 LIFE OF 

was performed at Manchester, Liverpool, 
Edinburgh, Birmingham, and Glasgow, the 
gross profits from nine nights being 2,5511. 
In November, 1850, Every Man in his 
Humour was again performed at Knebworth, 
Lord Lytton's house. The scheme for a 
' Guild of Literature and Art ' was suggested 
at Knebworth. In aid of the funds, a comedy 
by Lytton, Not So Bad As We Seem, and a 
farce by Dickens and Lemon, Mr, Nightin- 
gale's Diary, were performed at the Duke of 
Devonshire's house in London (27 May, 1851) , 
when the Queen and Prince Consort were pres- 
ent. Similar performances took place during 
1851 and 1852 at various towns, ending with 
Manchester and Liverpool. A dinner, with 
Lytton in the chair, at Manchester had a great 
success, and the guild was supposed to be 
effectually started. It ultimately broke down, 
though Dickens and Bulwer Lytton were en- 
'thusiastic supporters. During this period 
Dickens had been exceedingly active. The 
Haunted Man or Ghostly Bargain, the idea 
of which had occurred to him at Lausanne, was 
now written and published with great success 
at Christmas, 1848. He then began David 
Copperfield, in many respects the most satis- 



CHARLES DICKENS 29 

factory of his novels, and especially remark- 
able for the autobiographical element, which 
is conspicuous in so many successful fictions. 
It contains less of the purely farcical or of the 
satirical caricature than most of his novels, and 
shows his literary genius mellowed by age with- 
out loss of spontaneous vigour. It appeared 
monthly from JNIay, 1849, to November, 1850. 
The sale did not exceed twenty-five thousand 
copies; but the book made its mark. He was 
now accepted by the largest class of readers as 
the undoubted leader among English novelists. 
While it was proceeding he finally gave shape 
to a plan long contemplated for a weekly 
journal. It was announced at the close of 
1849, when Mr. W. H. Wills was selected as 
sub-editor, and continued to work with him 
until compelled to retire by ill-health in 1868. 
After many difficulties, the felicitous name. 
Household Words^ was at last selected, and 
the first number appeared 30 March, 1849, 
with the beginning of a story by Mrs. Gaskell. 
During the rest of his life Dickens gave much 
of his energy to this journal and its successor. 
All the Year Bound. He gathered many 
contributors, several of whom became intimate 
friends. He spared no pains in his editorial 



30 LIFE OF 

duty; he frequently amended his contributors' 
work and occasionally inserted passages of his 
own. He was singularly quick and generous 
in recognising and encouraging talent in 
hitherto unknown writers. Many of the best 
of his minor essays appeared in its pages. 
Dickens's new relation to his readers helped to 
extend the extraordinary popularity which 
continued to increase during his life. On the 
other hand, the excessive strain which it in- 
volved soon began k) tell seriously upon his 
strength. In 1848 he had been much grieved 
by the loss of his elder sister, Fanny. On 31 
March, 1851, his father, for whom in 1839 he 
had taken a house in Exeter, died at Malvern. 
Dickens, after attending his father's death, re- 
turned to town and took the chair at the dinner 
of the General Theatrical Fund 14 April, 
1851. After his speech he was told of the sud- 
den death of his infant daughter, Dora Annie 
(born 16 August, 1850) . Dickens left Devon- 
shire Terrace soon afterwards, and moved into 
Tavistock House, Tavistock Square. Here in 
November, 1851, he began Bleak House, 
which was published from March, 1852, to Sep- 
tember, 1853. It was followed by Hard 
Times, which appeared in Household Words, 



CHARLES DICKENS 31 

between 1 April and 12 August, 1854; and by 
Little Dorrit, which appeared in monthly 
numbers from January, 1856, to June, 1857. 
Forster thinks that the first evidence of exces- 
sive strain appeared during the composition of 
Bleak House. ' The spring,' says Dickens, 
' does not seem to fly back again directly, as 
it always did when I put my own work aside 
and had nothing else to do.' The old buoyancy 
of spirit is decreasing; the humour is often 
forced and the mannerism more strongly 
marked; the satire against the court of chan- 
cery, the utilitarians, and the ' circumlocution 
office ' is not relieved by tne irresistible fun of 
the former caricatures, nor strengthened by 
additional insight. It is superficial without be- 
ing good-humoured. Dickens never wrote 
carelessly; he threw his whole energy into 
every task which he undertook; and the unde- 
niable vigour of his books, the infallible in- 
stinct with which he gauged the taste of his 
readers, not less than his established reputation, 
gave him an increasing popularity. The sale 
of Bleak House exceeded thirty thousand; 
Hard Times doubled the circulation of 
Household Words; and Little Dorrit, 
'beat even- Bleak House out of the field.' 



32 LIFE OF 

Thirty-five thousand copies of the second 
number were sold. Bleak House contained 
sketches of Landor as Lawrence Boythorn, 
and of Leigh Hunt as Harold Skimpole. 
Dickens defended himself for the very un- 
pleasant caricature of Hunt in All the Year 
Round, after Hunt's death. While Hunt was 
still living, Dickens had tried to console him 
by explaining away the likeness as confined to 
the flattering part ; but it is impossible to deny 
that he gave serious ground for offence. Dur- 
ing this period Dickens was showing signs of 
increasing restlessness. He sought relief from 
his labours on Bleak House by spending 
three months at Dover in the autumn of 1852. 
In the beginning of 1853 he received a testi- 
monial at Birmingham, and undertook in 
return to give a public reading at Christmas on 
behalf of the New Midland Institute. He 
read two of his Christmas books and made a 
great success. He was induced, after some 
hesitation, to repeat the experiment several 
times in the next few years. The summer of 
1853 was spent at Boulogne, and in the au- 
tumn he made a two months' tour through 
Switzerland and Italy, with Mr. Wilkie Col- 
lins and Augustus Egg. In 1854 and 1856 he 



CHARLES DICKENS 33 

again spent summers at Boulogne, gaining 
materials for some very pleasant descriptions; 
and from November, 1855, to May, 1856, he 
was at Paris, working at Little Dorrit. Dur- 
ing 1855 he found time to take part in some 
political agitations. 

In ^larch, 1856, Dickens bought Gadshill 
Place. When a boy at Rochester he had con- 
ceived a childish aspiration to become its 
owner. On hearing that it was for sale in 
1855, he began negotiations for its purchase. 
He bought it with a view to occasional occupa- 
tion, intending to let it in the intervals ; but he 
became attached to it, spent much money on 
improving it, and finally in 1860 sold Tavi- 
stock House and made it his permanent abode. 
He continued to improve it till the end of his 
Hfe. 

In the winter of 1856-7 Dickens amused 
himself with private theatricals at Tavistock 
House, and after the death of Douglas Jerrold 
(6 June, 1857), got up a series of perform- 
ances for the benefit of his friend's family, 
one of which was Mr. Wilkie Collins's Frozen 
Deepj also performed at Tavistock House. 
For the same purpose he read the Christmas 
Carol at St. Martin's Hall (30 June, 1857), 



34 LIFE OF 

with a success which led him to carry out a plan 
already conceived, of giving public readings 
on his own account. He afterwards made an 
excursion with Mr. Wilkie Collins in the north 
of England, partly described in A Lazy Tour 
of Two Idle Apprentices. 

A growing restlessness and a craving for 
any form of distraction were connected with 
domestic unhappiness. In the beginning of 
1858 he was preparing his public readings. 
Some of his friends objected, but he decided 
to undertake them, j)artly, it would seem, from 
the desire to be fully occupied. He gave a 
reading, 15 April, 1858, for the benefit of the 
Children's Hospital in Great Ormond Street, 
in which he was keenly interested, and on 29 
April gave the first public reading for his own 
benefit. This was immediately followed by the 
separation from his wife. The eldest son lived 
with the mother, while the rest of the children 
remained with Dickens. Carlyle, mentioning 
the newspaper reports upon this subject to 
Emerson, says : ' Fact of separation, I believe, 
is true, but all the rest is mere lies and non- 
sense. No crime and no misdemeanour specifi- 
able on either side; unhappy together, these 
two, good many years past, and they at length 



CHARLES DICKENS 35 

end it' {Carlyle and Emerson Correspon- 
dence, ii. 269). Dickens chose to publish a 
statement himself in Household Words, 12 
June, 1858. He entrusted another and far 
more indiscreet letter to Mr. Arthur Smith, 
who now became the agent for his public read- 
ings, which was to be shown, if necessary, in 
his defence. It was published without his 
consent in the New York Tribune. The im- 
propriety of both proceedings needs no com- 
ment. But nothing has been made public which 
would justify any statement as to the merits 
of the question. Dickens's publication in 
Household Words, and their refusal to publish 
the same account in Punch, led to a quarrel 
with his publishers, which ended in his giving 
up the paper. He began an exactly similar 
paper, called All the Year Round (first num- 
ber 30 April, 1859), and returned to his old 
publishers, Messrs. Chapman & Hall. Dick- 
ens seems to have thought that some public 
statement was made necessary by the quasi- 
public character which he now assumed. From 
this time his readings became an important part 
of his work. They formed four series, given in 
1858-9, in 1861-3, in 1866-7, and 1868-70. 
They finally killed him, and it is impossible 



36 LIFE OF 

not to regret that he should have spent so much 
energy in an enterprise not worthy of his best 
powers. He began with sixteen nights at St. 
Martin's Hall, from 29 April to 22 July, 1858. 
A provincial tour of eighty-seven readings fol- 
lowed, including Ireland and Scotland. He 
gave a series of readings in London in the be- 
ginning of 1859, and made a provincial tour 
in October following. He was everywhere re- 
ceived with enthusiasm ; he cleared 300Z. a week 
before reaching Scotland, and in Scotland 
made 5001. a week. The readings were from 
the Christmas books, Pickwick, Domhey, Chuz- 
zlewit, and the Christmas numbers of House- 
hold Words. The Christmas numbers in his 
periodicals, and especially in All the Year 
Round, had a larger circulation than any of his 
writings, those in All the Year Round reaching 
three hundred thousand copies. Some of his 
most charming papers appeared, as the Un- 
commercial Traveller, in the last periodical. 
For his short story, Hunted Down, first printed 
in the New York Ledger, afterwards in All 
the Year Round, he received lOOOZ. This and 
a similar sum, paid for the Holiday Romance 
and George Silverman's Explanation in a 
child's magazine published by ]\Ir. Fields, and 



CHARLES DICKENS 37 

in the Atlantic Monthly, are mentioned by 
Forster as payments unequalled in the history 
of literature. 

In March, 1861, he began a second series of 
readings in London, and after waiting to finish 
Great Expectations, in All the Year Round, he 
made another tour in the autumn and winter. 
He read again in St. James's Hall in the spring 
of 1862, and gave some readings at Paris in 
January, 1863. The success was enormous, 
and he had an offer of 10,000Z., * afterwards 
raised,' for a visit to Australia. He hesitated 
for a time, but the plan was finally abandoned, 
and America, which had been suggested, was 
closed by the Civil War. For a time he re- 
turned to writing. The Tale of Two Cities 
had appeared in All the Year Bound during 
his first series of readings (April to Novem- 
ber, 1859). Great Expectations appeared in 
the same journal from December, 1860, to Au- 
gust, 1861, during part of the second series. 
He now set to work upon Our Mutual Friend, 
which came out in monthly numbers from May, 
1864, to November, 1865. It succeeded with 
the public; over thirty thousand copies of the 
first number were sold at starting, and, though 
there was a drop in the sale of the second num- 



38 LIFE OF 

ber, this circulation was much exceeded. The 
gloomy river scenes in this and in Great Expec- 
tations show Dickens's full power, but both 
stories are too plainly marked by flagging in- 
vention and spirits. Forster publishes extracts 
from a book of memoranda kept from 1855 
to 1865, in which Dickens first began to pre- 
serve notes for future work. He seems to have 
felt that he could no longer rely upon spon- 
taneous suggestions of the moment. 

His mother died in September, 1863, and 
his son Walter, for whom Miss Coutts had ob- 
tained a cadetship in the 26th Native Infantry, 
died at Calcutta on 31 December following. 
He began a third series of readings under omi- 
nous symptoms. In February, 1865, he had a 
severe illness. He ever afterwards suffered 
from a lameness in his left foot, which gave 
him great pain and puzzled his physicians. On 
9 June, 1865, he was in a terrible railway acci- 
dent at Staplehurst. The carriage in which he 
travelled left the line, but did not, with others, 
fall over the viaduct. The shock to his nerves 
was great and permanent, and he exerted him- 
self excessively to help the sufferers. The 
accident is vividly described in his Letters (ii. 
229-33). In spite of these injuries he never 



CHARLES DICKENS 39 

spared himself ; after sleepless nights he walked 
distances too great for his strength, and he 
now undertook a series of readings which in- 
volved greater labour than the previous series. 
He was anxious to make a provision for his 
large family, and, probably conscious that his 
strength would not long be equal to such per- 
formances, he resolved, as Forster says, to 
make the most money possible in the shortest 
time without regard to labour. Dickens was 
keenly affected by the sympathy of his audi- 
ence, and the visible testimony to his extraor- 
dinary popularity and to his singular dra- 
matic power was no doubt a powerful attrac- 
tion to a man who was certainly not without 
vanity, and who had been a popular idol almost 
from boyhood. 

After finishing Our Mutual Friend, he ac- 
cepted (in Februar)^ 1866) an offer, from 
Messrs. Chappell of Bond Street, of 50Z. a 
night for a series of thirty readings. The ar- 
rangements made it necessary that the hours 
not actually spent at the reading-desk or in 
bed should be chiefly passed in long railway 
journeys. He began in March and ended in 
June, 1866. In August he made a new agree- 
ment for forty nights at 60Z. a night, or 2500Z. 



40 LIFE OF 

for forty-two nights. These readings took 
place between January and May, 1867. The 
success of the readings again surpassed all 
precedent, and brought many invitations from 
America. Objections made by W. H. Wills 
and Forster were overruled. Dickens said 
that he must go at once if he went at all, to 
avoid clashing with the Presidential election of 
1868. He thought that by going he could 
realise ' a sufficient fortune.' He ' did not want 
money,' but the ' likelihood of making a very 
great addition to his capital in half a year ' was 
an * immense consideration.' In July Mr. 
Dolby sailed to America as his agent. An in- 
flammation of the foot, followed by erysipelas, 
gave a warning which was not heeded. On 1 
October, 1867, he telegraphed his acceptance 
of the engagement, and after a great farewell 
banquet at Freemasons' Hall (2 November), 
at which Lord Lytton presided, he sailed for 
Boston, 9 November, 1867, landing on the 19th. 
Americans had lost some of their provincial 
sensibility, and were only anxious to show that 
old resentments were forgotten. Dickens first 
read in Boston on 2 December; thence he went 
to New York ; he read afterwards at Philadel- 
phia, Baltimore, Washington, again at Phila- 



CHAKLES DICKENS 41 

delphia, Syracuse, Rochester, Buif alo, Spring- 
field, Portland, New Bedford, and finally at 
Boston and New York again. He received a 
public dinner at New York (18 April), and 
reached England in the first week of May, 
1868. He made nearly 20,000Z. in America, 
but at a heavy cost in health. He was con- 
stantly on the verge of a breakdown. He nat- 
urally complimented Americans, not only for 
their generous hospitality, but for the many 
social improvements since his previous visits, 
though politically he saw little to admire. He 
promised that no future editions of his Notes 
or Chuzzlewit should be issued without a men- 
tion of the improvements which had taken place 
in America, or in his state of mind. As a kind 
of thank-offering he had a copy of the Old 
Curiosity Shop printed in raised letters, and 
presented it to an American asylum for the 
Wind. 

Unfortunately Dickens was induced upon 
his return to give a final series of readings in 
England. He was to receive 8000Z. for a hun- 
dred readings. ThejT- began in October, 1868. 
Dickens had preferred as a novelty a reading 
of the murder in Oliver Twist. He had thought 
of this as early as 1863, but it was ' so horrible ' 



42 LIFE OF 

that he was then ' afraid to try it in public ' 
{Letters, ii. 200). The performance was re- 
garded by Forster as in itself ' illegitimate,' 
and Forster's protest led to a ' painful corre- 
spondence.' In any case, it involved an excite- 
ment and a degree of physical labour which 
told severely upon his declining strength. He 
was to give weekly readings in London alter- 
nately with readings in the country. In Feb- 
ruary, 1869, he was forced to suspend his work 
under medical advice. After a few days' rest 
he began again in spite of remonstrances from 
his friends and family. At last he broke down 
at Preston. On 23 April Sir Thomas Watson 
held a consultation with Mr. Beard, and found 
that he had been ' on the brink ' of an attack 
of paralysis of his left side, and possibly of 
apoplexy, due to overwork, worry, and excite- 
ment. He was ordered to give up his readings, 
though after some improvement Sir Thomas 
consented to twelve readings without railway 
travelling, which Dickens was anxious to give 
as some compensation to Messrs. Chappell for 
their disappointment. In the same autumn he 
began Edwin Drood. He was to receive 7500/. 
for twenty-five thousand copies, and fifty thou- 
sand were sold during his life. It ' very, very 



CHARLES DICKENS 43 

far outstripped every one of its predecessors* 
(J. T. Fields, p. 246) . He passed the year at 
Gadshill, leaving it occasionally to attend a 
few meetings, and working at his book. His 
last readings were given at St. James's Hall, 
from January to March. On 1 JMarch he took 
a final leave of his hearers in a few graceful 
words. In April appeared the first number of 
Edwin Drood. In the same month he ap- 
peared for the last time in public, taking the 
chair at the Newsvendors' dinner, and replying 
for ' Literature ' at the dinner of the Royal 
Academy (30 April) , when he spoke feelingly 
of the death of his old friend Maclise. He was 
at work upon his novel at Gadshill in June, and 
showed unusual fatigue. On 8 June he was 
working in the chalet which had been pre- 
sented to him in 1859 by Fechter, and put up 
as a study in his garden. He came into the 
house about six o'clock, and, after a few words 
to his sister-in-law, fell to the ground. There 
was an effusion on the brain; he never spoke 
again, and died at ten minutes past six on 9 
June, 1870. He was buried with all possible 
simplicity in Westminster Abbey, 14 June 
following. 

Dickens had ten children by his wife: 



44 LIFE OF 

Charles, bom 1837; Mary, born 1838; Kate, 
born 1839, afterwards married to Charles Alls- 
ton Collins, and now Mrs. Perugini; Walter 
Landor, born 1841, died 12 December, 1863 
(see above) ; Francis Jeffrey, born 1843; Al- 
fred Tennyson, born 1845, settled in Austra- 
lia; Sydney Smith Haldemand, born 1847, in 
the navy, buried at sea 2 May, 1867; Henry 
Fielding, born 1849; Dora Annie, born 1850, 
died 14 April, 1851 ; and Edward Bulwer Lyt- 
ton, born 1852, settled in Australia. 

Dickens's appearance is familiar by innu- 
merable photographs. Among portraits may 
be mentioned (1) by Maclise in 1839 (en- 
graved as frontispiece to Nicholas Nickleby), 
original in possession of Sir Alfred Jodrell of 
Bayfield, Norfolk; (2) pencil drawing by 
Maclise in 1842 (with his wife and sister) ; (3) 
oil-painting by E. M. Ward in 1854 (in pos- 
session of Mrs. Ward) ; (4) oil-painting by 
Ary SchefFer in 1856 (in National Portrait 
Gallery) ; (5) oil-painting by W. P. Frith in 
1859 (in Forster collection at South Kensing- 
ton). Dickens was frequently compared in 
later life to a bronzed sea captain. In early 
portraits he has a dandified appearance, and 
was always a little over-dressed. He possessed 



CHARLES DICKENS 45 

a wiry frame, implying enormous nervous en- 
ergy rather than muscular strength, and was 
most active in his habits, though not really 
robust. He seems to have overtaxed his 
strength by his passion for walking. All who 
knew him, from Carlyle downwards, speak of 
his many fine qualities, his generosity, sincer- 
ity, and kindliness. He was intensely fond of 
his children (see Mrs. Dickens's interesting 
account in Cornhill Magazine^ January, 1880) ; 
he loved dogs, and had a fancy for keeping 
large and eventually savage mastiffs and St. 
Bernards; and he was kind even to contribu- 
tors. His weaknesses are sutBciently obvious, 
and are reflected in his writings. If literary 
fame could be safel}'' measured by popularity 
with the half -educated, Dickens must claim 
the highest position among English novelists. 
It is said, apparently on authority (Mr. Mow- 
bray Morris in Fortnightly Review for De- 
cember, 1882) that 4,239,000 volumes of his 
works had been sold in England in the twelve 
years after his death. The criticism of more 
severe critics chiefly consists in the assertion 
that his merits are such as suit the half -edu- 
cated. They admit his fun to be irresistible; 
his pathos, they say, though it shows bound- 



46 LIFE OF CHARLES DICKENS 

less vivacity, implies little real depth or ten- 
derness of feeling; and his amazing powers of 
observation were out of proportion to his pow- 
ers of reflection. The social and political views 
which he constantly inculcates imply a delib- 
erate preference of spontaneous instinct to 
genuine reasoned conviction; his style is clear, 
vigorous, and often felicitous, but mannered 
and more forcible than delicate; he writes too 
clearly for readers who cannot take a joke till 
it has been well hammered into their heads; 
his vivid perception of external oddities passes 
into something like hallucination, and in his 
later books the constant strain to produce ef- 
fects only legitimate when spontaneous be- 
comes painful. His books are therefore inim- 
itable caricatures of contemporary humours, 
rather than the masterpieces of a great ob- 
server of human nature. 



NOTE 

That I should have to acknowledge a fairly 
heavy debt to Forster's Life of Charles Dick- 
ens and The Letters of Charles Dickens, ed- 
ited by his sister-in-law and his eldest daughter, 
is almost a matter of course; for these are 
books from which every present and future 
biographer of Dickens must necessarily borrow 
in a more or less degree. My work, too, has 
been much lightened by Mr. Kitton's excellent 
Dickensiana. 

F. T. M. 



47 



e 



LIFE OF 
CHARLES DICKENS 



CHAPTER I 

'DUCATION is a kind of lottery in 
which there are good and evil chances, 
and some men draw blanks and other 
men draw prizes. And in saying this I do not 
use the word education in any restricted sense, 
as applying exclusively to the course of study 
in school or college ; nor certainly, when I speak 
of prizes, am I thinking of scholarships, exhi- 
bitions, fellowships. By education I mean the 
whole set of circumstances which go to mould 
a man's character during the apprentice years 
of his life; and I call that a prize when those 
circumstances have been such as to develop the 
man's powers to the utmost, and to fit him -to 
do best that of which he is best capable. Looked 
at in this way, Charles Dickens's education, 
however untoward and unpromising it may 

49 



50 LIFE OF 

often have seemed while in the process, must 
really be pronounced a prize of value quite 
inestimable. 

His father, John Dickens, held a clerkship 
in the Navy Pay Office, and was employed in 
the Portsmouth Dockyard when little Charles 
first came into the world, at Landport, in Port- 
sea, on February 7, 1812. Wealth can never 
have been one of the familiar friends of the 
household, nor plenty have always sat at its 
board. Charles had one elder sister, and six 
other brothers and sisters were afterwards 
added to the family; and with eight children, 
and successive removals from Portsmouth to 
London, and London to Chatham, and no more 
than the pay of a Government clerk ^ — pay 
which not long afterwards dwindled to a pen- 
sion, — even a better domestic financier than 
the elder Dickens might have found some diffi- 
culty in facing his liabilities. It was unques- 
tionably into a tottering house that the child 
was born, and among its ruins that he was 
nurtured. 

^200Z. a year 'without extras' from 1815 to 1820, 
and then 350/. See Childhood and Youth of Charles 
Dichens, by Robert Langton, a very valuable mono- 
graph. 



CHARLES DICKENS 51 

But through all these early years I can do 
nothing better than take him for my guide, and 
walk as it were in his companionship. Per- 
haps no novelist ever had a keener feeling for 
the pathos of childhood than Dickens, or un- 
derstood more fully how real and overwhelm- 
ing are its sorrows. No one, too, has entered 
more sympathetically into its ways. And of 
the child and boy that he himself had once 
been, he was wont to think very tenderly and 
very often. Again and again in his writings 
he reverts to the scenes and incidents and emo- 
tions of his earlier days. Sometimes he goes 
back to his young life directly, speaking as of 
himself. More often he goes back to it indi- 
rectly, placing imaginary children and boys 
in the position he had once occupied. Thus it 
is almost possible, by judiciously selecting from 
his works, and using such keys as we possess, 
to construct as it were a kind of autobiography. 
Nor, if we make due allowance for the great 
writer's tendency to idealize the past, and in- 
tensify its humorous and pathetic aspects, need 
we at all fear that the self -written story of his 
life should convey a false impression. 

He was but two years old when his father 
left Portsea for London, and but four when a 



52 LIFE OF 

second migration took the family to Chatham. 
Here we catch our first glimpse of him, in his 
own word-painting, as a ' very queer small 
boy,' a small boy who was sickly and delicate, 
and could take but little part in the rougher 
sports of his school companions, but read much, 
as sickly boys will — the novels of the older 
novelists in a ' blessed little room,' a kind of 
palace of enchantment, where ' Roderick Ran- 
dom, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, 
Tom Jones, The Vicar of Wakefield, Don 
Quixote, Gil Bias, and Robinson Crusoe, came 
out, a glorious host, to keep him company.' 
And the queer small boy had read Shake- 
speare's Henry IV., too, and knew all about 
Falstaif's robbery of the travellers at Gad's 
Hill, on the rising ground between Rochester 
and Gravesend, and all about mad Prince 
Henry's pranks; and, what was more, he had 
determined that when he came to be a man, 
and had made his Mvsiy in the world, he should 
own the house called Gad's Hill Place, with 
the old associations of its site, and its pleasant 
outlook over Rochester and over the low-lying 
levels by the Thames. Was that a child's 
dream? The man's tenacity and steadfast 
strength of purpose turned it into fact. The 



CHARLES DICKENS 53 

house became the home of his later life. It 
was there that he died. 

But death was a long way forward in those 
old Chatham days ; nor, as the time slipped by, 
and his father's pecuniary embarrassments be- 
gan to thicken, and make the forward ways of 
life more dark and difficult, could the purchase 
of Gad's Hill Place have seemed much less re- 
mote. There is one of Dickens's works which 
was his own special favourite, the most cher- 
ished, as he tells us, among the offspring of his 
brain. That work is David Copperfield. Nor 
can there be much difficulty in discovering why 
it occupied such an exceptional position in ' his 
heart of hearts ' ; for in its pages he has en- 
shrined the deepest memories of his own child- 
hood and youth. Like David Copperfield, he 
had known what it was to be a poor, neglected 
lad, set to rough, uncongenial work, with no 
more than a mechanic's surroundings and out- 
look, and having to fend for himself in the 
miry ways of the great city. Like David Cop- 
perfield, he had formed a very early acquaint- 
ance with debts and duns, and been initiated 
into the mysteries and sad expedients of shabby 
poverty. Like David Copperfield, he had been 
made free of the interior of a debtor's prison. 



54 LIFE OF 

Poor lad, he was not much more than ten or 
eleven years old when he left Chatham, with 
all the charms that were ever after to live so 
brightly in his recollection, — the gay military 
pageantry, the swarming dockyard, the shift- 
ing sailor life, the delightful walks in the sur- 
rounding country, the enchanted room, ten- 
anted by the first fairy day-dreams of his 
genius, the day-school, where the master had 
already formed a good opinion of his parts, 
giving him Goldsmith's Bee as a keepsake. 
This pleasant land he left for a dingy house in 
a dingy London suburb, with squalor for com- 
panionship, no teaching but the teaching of the 
streets, and all around and above him the de- 
pressing hideous atmosphere of debt. With 
what inimitable humour and pathos has he told 
the story of these darkest days! Substitute 
John Dickens for Mr. Micawber, and Mrs. 
Dickens for Mrs. Micawber, and make David 
Copperfield a son of Mr. Micawber, a kind of 
elder Wilkins, and let little Charles Dickens be 
that son — and then you will have a record, true 
in every essential respect, of the child's life at 
this period. ' Poor Mrs. Micawber ! she said 
she had tried to exert herself ; and so, I have no 
doubt, she had. The centre of the street door 



CHARLES DICKENS 55 

was perfectly covered with a great brass-plate, 
on which was engraved ' Mrs. Micawber's 
Boarding Establishment for Young Ladies; ' 
but I never found that any young lady had 
ever been to school there; or that any young 
lady ever came, or proposed to come; or that 
the least preparation was ever made to receive 
any young lady. The only visitors I ever saw 
or heard of were creditors. They used to come 
at all hours, and some of them were quite fero- 
cious.' Even such a plate, bearing the inscrip- 
tion, ' Mrs. Dickens's Establishment,' orna- 
mented the door of a house in Gower Street 
North, where the family had hoped, by some 
desperate effort, to retrieve its ruined fortunes. 
Even so did the pupils refuse the educational 
advantages offered to them, though little 
Charles went from door to door in the neigh- 
bourhood, carrying hither and thither the most 
alluring circulars. Even thus was the place 
besieged by assiduous and angry duns. And 
when, in the ordinary course of such sad stories, 
Mr. Dickens is arrested for debt, and carried 
off to the Marshalsea prison,^ he moralizes over 

^ Mr. Langton appears to doubt whether John Dickens 
was not imprisoned in the King's Bench. But this 
seems scarcely a point on which Dickens himself can 
have been mistaken. 



56 LIFE OF 

the event in precisely the same strain as Mr. 
Micawber, using, indeed, the very same words, 
and calls on his son, with many tears, ' to take 
warning by the Marshalsea, and to observe 
that if a man had twenty pounds a year, and 
spent nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and 
sixpence, he would be happy; but that a shil- 
ling spent the other way would make him 
wretched.' 

The son was taking note of other things be- 
sides these moral apothegms, and reproduced, 
in after days, with a quite marvellous detail 
and fidelity, all the incidents of his father's 
incarceration. Probably, too, he was begin- 
ning, as children will, almost unconsciously, to 
form some estimate of his father's character. 
And a very queer study in human nature that 
must have been, giving Dickens, when once he 
had mastered it, a most exceptional insight into 
the ways of impecuniositj''. Charles Lamb, as 
we all remember, divided mankind into two 
races, the mighty race of the borrowers, and the 
mean race of the lenders ; and expatiated, with 
a whimsical and charming eloquence, upon the 
greatness of one Bigod, who had been as a king 
among those who by process of loan obtain 
possession of other people's monej^ Shift the 



CHARLES DICKENS 57 

line of division a little, so that instead of sepa- 
rating borrowers and lenders, it separates those 
who pay their debts from those who do not pay 
them, and then Dickens the elder may succeed 
to something of Bigod's kingship. He was of 
the great race of debtors, possessing especially 
that ideal quality of mind on which Lamb laid 
such stress. Imagination played the very mis- 
chief with him. He had evidently little grasp 
of fact, and moved in a kind of haze, through 
which all clear outlines would show blurred and 
unreal. Sometimes — most often, perhaps — 
that haze would be irradiated with sanguine 
visionary hopes and expectations. Sometimes 
it would be fitfully darkened with all the hor- 
rors of despair. But whether in gloom or 
gleam, the realities of his position would be 
lost. He never, certainly, contracted a debt 
which he did not mean honourably to pay. But 
either he had never possessed the faculty of 
forming a just estimate of future possibilities, 
or else, through the indulgence of what may be 
called a vague habit of thought, he had lost the 
power of seeing things as they are. Thus all 
his excellences and good gifts were neutralized 
at this time, so far as his family were con- 
cerned, and went for practically nothing. He 



58 LIFE OF 

was, according to his son's testimony, full of 
industry, most conscientious in the discharge 
of any business, unwearying in loving patience 
and solicitude when those bound to him by 
blood or friendship were ill or in trouble, ' as 
kind-hearted and generous a man as ever lived 
in the world.' Yet as debts accumulated, and 
accommodation bills shed their baleful shadow 
on his life, and duns grew many and furious, he 
became altogether immersed in mean money 
troubles, and suffered the son who was to shed 
such lustre on his name to remain for a time 
without the means of learning, and to sink first 
into a little household drudge, and then into a 
mere warehouse boy. 

So little Charles, aged from eleven to twelve, 
first blacked boots, and minded the younger 
children, and ran messages, and effected the 
family purchases, — which can have been no 
pleasant task in the then state of the family 
credit, — and made very close acquaintance with 
the inside of the pawnbrokers' shops, and with 
the purchases of second-hand books, disposing, 
among other things, of the little store of books 
he loved so well ; and then, when his father was 
imprisoned, ran more messages hither and 
thither, and shed many childish tears in his 



CHARLES DICKENS 59 

father's company — the father doubtless re- 
garding the tears as a tribute to his eloquence, 
though, heaven knows, there were other things 
to cry over besides his sonorous periods. After 
which a connection, James Lamert by name, 
who had lived with the family before they 
moved from Camden Town to Gower Street, 
and was manager of a worm-eaten, rat-riddled 
blacking business, near old Hungerford Mar- 
ket, offered to employ the lad, on a salary of 
some six shillings a week, or thereabouts. The 
duties which commanded these high emolu- 
ments consisted of the tying up and labelling 
of blacking pots. At first Charles, in consid- 
eration probably of his relationship to the man- 
ager, was allowed to do his tying, clipping, and 
pasting in the counting-house. But soon this 
arrangement fell through, as it naturally 
would, and he descended to the companionship 
of the other lads, similarly employed, in the 
warehouse below. They were not bad boys, 
and one of them, who bore the name of Bob 
Fagin, was very kind to the poor little better- 
nurtured outcast, once, in a sudden attack of 
illness, applying hot blacking-bottles to his side 
with much tenderness. But, of course, they 
were rough and quite uncultured, and the sen- 



60 LIFE OF 

sitive, bookish, imaginative child felt that there 
was something uncongenial and degrading in 
being compelled to associate with them. Nor, 
though he had already sufficient strength of 
character to learn to do his work well, did he 
ever regard the work itself as anything but 
unsuitable, and almost discreditable. Indeed 
it may be doubted whether the iron of that time 
did not unduly rankle and fester as it entered 
into his soul, and whether the scar caused by 
the wound was altogether quite honourable. 
He seems to have felt, in connection with his 
early employment in a warehouse, a sense of 
shame such as would be more fittingly associ- 
ated with the commission of an unworthy act. 
That he should not have habitually referred to 
the subject in after life, may readily be under- 
stood. But why he should have kept unbroken 
silence about it for long years, even with his 
wife, even with so very close a friend as Fors- 
ter, is less clear. And in the terms used, when 
the revelation was finally made to Forster, 
there has always, I confess, appeared to me to 
be a tone of exaggeration. ' My whole na- 
ture,' he says, * was so penetrated with grief 
and humiliation, . . . that even now, famous 
and caressed and happy, I often forget in my 



CHARLES DICKENS 61 

dreams that I have a dear wife and children; 
even that I am a man, and wander desolately- 
back to that time of my life.' And again: 
' From that hour until this, at which I write, no 
word of that part of my childhood, which I 
have now gladly brought to a close, has passed 
my lips to any human being. ... I have 
never, until now I impart it to this paper, in 
any burst of confidence with any one, my own 
wife not excepted, raised the curtain I then 
dropped, thank God.' Great part, perhaps the 
greatest part, of Dickens's success as a wi-iter, 
came from the sympathy and power with which 
he showed how the lower walks of life no less 
than the higher are often fringed with beauty. 
I have never been able to entirely divest myself 
of a slight feeling of the incongruous in read- 
ing what he wrote about the warehouse episode 
in his career. 

At first, when he began his daily toil at the 
blacking business, some poor dregs of family 
life were left to the child. His father was at 
the Marshalsea. But his mother and brothers 
and sisters were, to use his own words, ' still 
encamped, with a young servant girl from 
Chatham workhouse, in the two parlours in 
the emptied house in Gower Street North.' 



62 LIFE OF 

And there he lived with them, in much * hug- 
ger-mugger/ merely taking his humble mid- 
day meal in nomadic fashion, on his own ac- 
count. Soon, however, his position became 
even more forlorn. The paternal creditors 
proved insatiable. The gypsy home in 
Gower Street had to be broken up. Mrs. 
Dickens and the children went to live at 
the Marshalsea. Little Charles was placed 
under the roof — it cannot be called under 
the care — of a * reduced old lady,' dwell- 
ing in Camden Town, who must have been 
a clever and prophetic old lady if she an- 
ticipated that her diminutive lodger would 
one day give her a kind of indirect unen- 
viable immortality by making her figure, under 
the name of Mrs. Pipchin, in Domhey and 
Son. 

Here the boy seems to have been left al- 
most entirely to his own devices. He spent 
his Sundays in the prison, and, to the best of 
his recollection, his lodgings at ' Mrs. Pip- 
chin's ' were paid for. Otherwise, he ' found 
himself,' in childish fashion, out of the six or 
seven weekly shillings, breakfasting on two 
pennyworth of bread and milk, and supping 
on a penny loaf and a bit of cheese, and dining 



CHARLES DICKENS 63 

hither and thither, as his boy's appetite dictated 
— now, sensibly enough, on a la mode beef or a 
saveloy; then, less sensibly, on pudding; and 
anon not dining at all, the wherewithal having 
been expended on some morning treat of cheap 
stale pastry. But are not all these things, the 
lad's shifts and expedients, his sorrows and 
despair, his visits to the public-house, where the 
kindly publican's wife stoops down to kiss the 
pathetic little face — are they not all written in 
David Copper field? And if so be that I have 
a reader unacquainted with that peerless book, 
can I do better than recommend him, or her, 
to study therein the story of Dickens's life at 
this particular time ? 

At last the child's solitude and sorrows seem 
to have grown unbearable. His fortitude broke 
down. One Sunday night he appealed to his 
father, with many tears, on the subject, not of 
his employment, which he seems to have ac- 
cepted at the time manfully, but of his f orlorn- 
ness and isolation. The father's kind, thought- 
less heart was touched. A back attic was found 
for Charles near the Marshalsea, at Lant 
Street, in the Borough — where Bob Sawyer, it 
will be remembered, afterwards invited Mr. 
Pickwick to that disastrous party. The boy 



64 LIFE OF 

moved into his new quarters with the same feel- 
ing of elation as if he had been entering a 
palace. 

The change naturally brought him more 
fully into the prison circle. He used to break- 
fast there every morning, before going to the 
warehouse, and would spend the larger portion 
of his spare time among the inmates. Nor do 
Mr. Dickens and his family, and Charles, who 
is to us the family's most important member, 
appear to have been relatively at all uncom- 
fortable while under the shadow of the Mar- 
shalsea. 

There is in David Copperfield a passage 
of inimitable humour, where Mr. Micaw- 
ber, enlarging on the pleasures of imprison- 
ment for debt, apostrophizes the King's Bench 
Prison as being the place ' where, for the first 
time in many revolving years, the overwhelm- 
ing pressure of pecuniary liabilities was not 
proclaimed from day to day, by importunate 
voices declining to vacate the passage; where 
there was no knocker on the door for any cred- 
itor to appeal to; where personal service of 
process was not required, and detainers were 
lodged merely at the gate.' There is a similar 
passage in Little Dorrit, where the tipsy medi- 



CHARLES DICKENS 65 

cal practitioner of the Marshalsea comforts 
Mr. Dorrit in his affliction by saying : * We are 
quiet here ; we don't get badgered here ; there's 
no knocker here, sir, to be hammered at by cred- 
itors, and bring a man's heart into his mouth. 
Nobody comes here to ask if a man's at home, 
and to say he'll stand on the door-mat till he is. 
Nobody writes threatening letters about money 
to this place. It's freedom, sir, it's freedom I ' 
One smiles as one reads ; and it adds a pathos, 
I think, to the smile, to find that these are rec- 
ords of actual experience. The Marshalsea 
prison was to Mr. Dickens a haven of peace, 
and to his household a place of plenty. Not 
only could he pursue his career there untrou- 
bled by fears of arrest, but he exercised among 
the other ' gentlemen gaol-birds ' a supremacy, 
a kind of kingship, such as that to which 
Charles Lamb referred. They recognized in 
him the superior spirit, ready of pen, and afflu- 
ent of speech, and with a certain grandeur in 
his conviviality. He it was who drew up their 
memorial to George of England on an occa- 
sion no less important than the royal birthday, 
when they, the monarch's * unfortunate sub- 
jects ' — so they were described in the memo- 
rial — besought the king's ' gracious majesty,' 



66 LIFE OF 

of his ' well-known munificence,' to grant them 
a something towards the drinking of the royal 
health. (Ah, with what keen eyes and pene- 
trative genius did little Charles, from his cor- 
ner, watch the strange sad stream of humanity 
that trickled through the room, and may be 
said to have smeared its approval of that peti- 
tion!) And while Mr. Dickens was enjoying 
his prison honours, he was also enjoying his 
Admiralty pension,^ which was not forfeited 
by his imprisonment ; and his wife and children 
were consequently enjoying a larger measure 
of the necessaries of life than had been theirs 
for many a month. So all went on merrily 
enough at the Marshalsea. 

But even under the old law, imprisonment 
for debt did not always last for ever. A 
legacy, and the Insolvent Debtors Act, enabled 
Mr. Dickens to march out of durance, in some 
sort with the honours of war, after a few 
months' incarceration — this would be early in 
1824; — and he went with his family, including 
Charles, to lodge with the ' Mrs. Pipchin * 
already mentioned. Charles meanwhile still 
toiled on in the blacking warehouse, now re- 

^ According to Mr. Langton's dates, he would still be 
drawing his pay. 



CHARLES DICKENS 67 

moved to Chandos Street, Covent Garden; 
and had reached such skill in the tying, pasting, 
and labelling of the bottles, that small crowds 
used to collect at the window for the purpose 
of watching his deft fingers. There was pride 
in this, no doubt, but also humiliation ; and re- 
lease was at hand. His father and Lamert 
quarrelled about something — about what, 
Dickens seems never to have known — and he 
was sent home. Mrs. Dickens acted the part 
of the peacemaker on the next day, probably 
feeling that amid the shadowy expectations on 
which she and her husband had subsisted for 
so long, even six or seven shillings a week was 
something tangible, and not to be despised. 
Yet in spite of this, he did not return to the 
business. His father decided that he should 
go to school. * I do not write resentfully or 
angrily,' said Dickens, in the confidential com- 
munication made long afterwards to Forster, 
and to which reference has already been made ; 
' but I never afterwards forgot, I never shall 
forget, I never can forget, that my mother 
was warm for my being sent back.' 

The mothers of great men is a subject that 
has been handled often, and eloquently. How 
many of those who have achieved distinction 



68 LIFE OF 

can trace their inherited gifts to a mother's 
character, and their acquired gifts to a mother's 
teaching and influence! Mrs. Dickens seems 
not to have been a mother of this stamp. She 
scarcely, I fear, possessed those admirable 
qualities of mind and heart which one can 
clearly recognize as having borne fruit in the 
greatness and goodness of her famous son. So 
far as I can discover, she exercised no influence 
upon him at all. Her name hardly appears in 
his biographies. He never, that I can recollect, 
mentions her in his correspondence ; only refers 
to her on the rarest occasions. And perhaps, 
on the whole, this is not to be wondered at, if 
we accept the constant tradition that she had, 
unknown to herself, sat to her son for the por- 
trait of Mrs. Nickleby, and suggested to him 
the main traits in the character of that incon- 
sequent and not very wise old lady. Mrs. 
Nickleby, I take it, was not the kind of person 
calculated to form the mind of a boy of genius. 
As well might one expect some very domestic 
bird to teach an eaglet how to fly. 

The school to which our callow eaglet was 
sent (in the spring or early summer of 1824), 
belonged emphatically to the old school of 
schools. It bore the goodly name of Welling- 



CHARLES DICKENS 69 

ton House Academy^ and was situated in 
Mornington Place, near the Hampstead Road. 
A certain Mr. Jones held chief rule there ; and 
as more than fifty years have now elapsed 
since Dickens's connection with the establish- 
ment ceased, I trust there may be nothing 
libellous in giving further currency to his 
statement, or rather, perhaps, to his recorded 
impression,^ that the head master's one quali- 
fication for his office was dexterity in the use of 
the cane ; — especially as another ' old boy ' 
corroborates that impression, and declares Mr. 
Jones to have been ' a most ignorant fellow, 
and a mere tyrant.' Dickens, however, escaped 
with comparatively little beating, because he 
was a day-boy, and sound policy dictated that 
day-boys, who had facilities for carrying home 
their complaints, should be treated with some 
leniency. So he had to get his learning with- 
out tears, which was not at all considered the 
orthodox method in the good old days; and, 
indeed, I doubt if he finally took away from 
Wellington House Academy very much of the 
book knowledge that would tell in a modern 
competitive examination. For though in his 
own account of the school it is implied that he 

* See paper entitled " Our School." 



70 LIFE OF 

resumed his interrupted studies with Virgil, 
and was, before he left, head boy, and the 
possessor of many prizes, yet this is not cor- 
roborated by the evidence of his surviving fel- 
low pupils; nor can we, of course, in the face 
of their direct counter evidence, treat state- 
ments made in a fictitious or half-fictitious 
narrative as if made in what professed to be a 
sober autobiography. Dickens, I repeat, seems 
to have acquired a very scant amount of classic 
lore while under the instruction of Mr. Jones, 
and not too much lore of any kind. But if he 
learned little, he observed much. He thor- 
oughly mastered the humours of the place, just 
as he had mastered the humours of the Mar- 
shalsea. He had got to know all about the 
masters, and all about the boys, and all about 
the white mice — of which there were manj'' in 
various stages of civilization. He acquired, in 
short, a fund of school knowledge that seemed 
inexhaustible, and on which he drew again and 
again, with the most excellent results, in 
David Copperfieldj in Dombey, in such inim- 
itable short papers as Old Cheeseman. And 
while thus, half unconsciously perhaps, assim- 
ilating the very life of the school, he was 
himself a thorough schoolboy, bright, alert, in- 



CHARLES DICKENS 71 

teUigent; taking part in all fun and frolic; 
amply indemnifying himself for his enforced 
abstinence from childish games during the 
dreary warehouse days; good at recitations and 
mimic plays; and already possessed of a repu- 
tation among his peers as a writer of tales. 



72 LIFE OF 



CHAPTER II 

OICKENS cannot have been very long 
at Wellington House Academy, for 
before May, 1827, he had been at an- 
other school near Brunswick Square, and had 
also obtained, and quitted, some employment 
in the office of a solicitor in ISTew Square, Lin- 
coln's Inn Fields. It seems clear, therefore, 
that the whole of his school life might easily 
be computed in months; and in May, 1827, it 
will be remembered, he was still but a lad of 
fifteen. At that date he entered the office of 
a second solicitor, in Gray's Inn this time, on 
a salary of thirteen shillings and sixpence a 
week, afterwards increased to fifteen shillings. 
Here he remained till November, 1828, again 
picking up a good deal of information that 
cannot perhaps be regarded as strictly legal, 
but such as he was afterwards able to turn to 
admirable account. He would seem to have 
studied the profession exhaustively in all its 
branches, from the topmost Tulkinghorns and 
Parkers, to the lowest pettifoggers like Pell 



CHARLES DICKENS 73 

and Brass, and also to have given particular 
attention to the parasites of the law — the 
Guppys and Chucksters; and altogether to 
have stored his mind, as he had done at school, 
with a series of invaluable notes and observa- 
tions. All very well, no doubt, as we look at 
the matter now. But then it must often have 
seemed to the ambitious, energetic lad, that he 
was wasting his time. Was he to remain for- 
ever a lawyer's clerk who has not the means to 
be an articled clerk, and who can never, there- 
fore, aspire to become a full-blown solicitor? 
Was he to spend the future obscurely in the 
dingy purlieus of the law? His father, in 
whose career ' something,' as Mr. Micawber 
would have said, had at last ' turned up,' was 
now a reporter for the press. The son deter- 
mined to be a reporter too. 

He threw himself into this new career with 
characteristic energy. Of course a reporter is 
not made in a day. It takes many months of 
drudgery to obtain such skill in shorthand as 
shall enable the pen of the ready-writer to 
keep up with the winged words of speech, and 
make dots and lines that shall be readable. 
Dickens laboured hard to acquire the art. In 
the intervals of his work he made it a kind of 



74 LIFE OF 

holiday task to attend the Reading-room of the 
British Museum, and so remedy the defects in 
the literary part of his education. But the best 
powers of his mind were directed to ' Gurney's 
system of shorthand.* And in time he had his 
reward. He earned and justified the reputa- 
tion of being one of the best reporters of his 
day. 

I shall not quote the autobiographical pas- 
sages in David Copperfield which bear on 
the difficulties of stenography. The book is 
in everybody's hands. But I cannot forego 
the pleasure of brightening my pages with 
Dickens's own description of his experience 
as a reporter, a description contained in one 
of those charming felicitous speeches of his 
which are almost as unique in kind as his novels. 
Speaking in May, 1865, as chairman of a pub- 
lic dinner on behalf of the Newspaper Press 
Fund, he said : * I have pursued the calling of 
a reporter under circumstances of which many 
of my brethren at home in England here, many 
of my modern successors, can form no ade- 
quate conception. I have often transcribed for 
the printer, from my shorthand notes, impor- 
tant public speeches, in which the strictest 
accuracy was required, and a mistake in which 



CHARLES DICKENS 75 

would have been, to a young man, severely 
compromising, writing on the palm of my 
hand, by the light of a dark lantern, in a post- 
chaise and four, galloping through a wild 
country, and through the dead of the night, 
at the then surprising rate of fifteen miles an 
hour. The very last time I was at Exeter, I 
strolled into the castle-yard there to identify, 
for the amusement of a friend, the spot on 
which I once took, as we used to call it, an 
election speech of my noble friend Lord Rus- 
sell, in the midst of a lively fight maintained 
by all the vagabonds in that division of the 
county, and under such pelting rain, that I 
remember two good-natured colleagues, who 
chanced to be at leisure, held a pocket-hand- 
kerchief over my note-book, after the manner 
of a State canopy in an ecclesiastical proces- 
sion. I have worn my knees by writing on 
them on the old back row of the old gallery in 
the old House of Commons; and I have worn 
my feet by standing to write in a preposterous 
pen in the old House of Lords, where we used 
to be huddled together like so many sheep, 
kept in waiting, say, until the woolsack might 
want re-stuffing. Returning home from ex- 
cited political meetings in the country to the 



76 LIFE OF 

waiting press in London, I do verily believe I 
have been upset in almost every description of 
vehicle known in this country. I have been, 
in my time, belated in miry by-roads, towards 
the small hours, forty or fifty miles from Lon- 
don, in a wheel-less carriage, with exhausted 
horses, and drunken postboys, and have got 
back in time for publication, to be received with 
never-forgotten compliments by the late Mr. 
Black, coming in the broadest of Scotch from 
the broadest of hearts I ever knew.' 

What shall I add to this? That the papers 
on which he was engaged as a reporter were 
The True Sun, The Mirror of Parliament, and 
The Morning Chronicle; that long afterwards, 
little more than two years before his death, 
when addressing the journalists of New York, 
he gave public expression to his * grateful re- 
membrance of a calling that was once his own,' 
and declared * to the wholesome training of 
severe newspaper work, when I was a very 
young man, I constantly refer my first suc- 
cess'; that his income as a reporter appears 
latterly to have been some five guineas a week, 
of course in addition to expenses and general 
breakages and damages; that there is inde- 
pendent testimony to his exceptional quickness 



CHARLES DICKENS 77 

in reporting and transcribing, and to his intelli- 
gence in condensing; that to an observer so 
keen and apt, the experiences of his business 
journeys in those more picturesque and event- 
ful ante-railway days must have been invalu- 
able; and, finally, that his connection with 
journalism lasted far into 1836, and so did not 
cease till some months after Pickwick had 
begun to add to the world's store of merriment 
and laughter. 

But I have not really reached Pickwick 
yet, nor anything like it. That master-work 
was not also a first work. With all Dickens's 
genius, he had to go through some apprentice- 
ship in the writer's art before coming upon the 
public as the most popular novelist of his time. 
Let us go back for a little to the twilight be- 
fore the full sunrise, nay, to the earliest streak 
upon the greyness of night, to his first original 
published composition. Dickens himself, and 
in his preface to Pickwick too, has told us 
somewhat about that first paper of his; how 
it was ' dropped stealthily one evening at twi- 
light, with fear and trembling, into a dark let- 
ter-box, in a dark office, up a dark court in 
Fleet Street ' ; how it was accepted, and ' ap- 
peared in all the glory of print ' ; and how he 



78 LIFE OF 

was so filled with pleasure and pride on pur- 
chasing a copy of the magazine in which it was 
published, that he went into Westminster Hall 
to hide the tears of joy that would come into 
his eyes. The paper thus joyfully wept over 
was originally entitled A Dinner at Poplar 
Walk, and now bears, among the Sketches 
by Boz, the name of Mr, Minns and his 
Cousin; the periodical in which it was pub- 
lished was The Old Monthly Magazine, and the 
date of publication was 1 January, 1834. 

A Dinner at Poplar Walk may be pro- 
nounced a very fairly told tale. It is, no doubt, 
always easy to be wise after the event, in 
criticism particularly easy, and when once a 
writer has achieved success, there is but too 
little difficulty in showing that his earlier pro- 
ductions were prophetic of his future great- 
ness. At the risk, however, of incurring a 
charge of this kind, I repeat that Dickens's 
first story is well told, and that the editor of 
The Old Monthly Magazine showed due dis- 
cernment in accepting it and encouraging his 
unknown ccncributor to further efforts. Quite 
apart from the fact that the author was only 
a young fellow of some two or three and 
twenty, both this first story and the stories that 



CHARLES DICKENS 79 

followed it in The Old Monthly Magazine, 
during 1834 and the early part of 1835, pos- 
sessed qualities of a very remarkable kind. So 
also did the humorous descriptive papers 
shortly afterwards published in The Evening 
Chronicle^ papers that, with the stories, now 
compose the book known as Sketches by Boz. 
Sir Arthur Helps, speaking of Dickens, just 
after Dickens's death,^ said, ' His powers of 

observation were almost unrivalled 

Indeed, I have said to myself when I have been 
with him, he sees and observes nine facts for 
any two that I see and observe.' This particu- 
lar faculty is, I think, almost as clearly dis- 
cernible in the Sketches as in the author's 
later and greater works. London — its sins and 
sorrows, its gaieties and amusements, its subur- 
ban gentilities, and central squalor, the aspects 
of its streets, and the humours of the dingier 
classes among its inhabitants, — all this had 
certainly never been so seen and described be- 
fore. The power of exact minute delineation 
lavished upon the picture is admirable. Again, 
the dialogue in the dramatic parts is natural, 
well-conducted, characteristic, and so used as 
to help, not impede, the narrative. The speech, 
^ Macmillan's Magazine, July, 1870. 



80 LIFE OF 

for instance, of Mr. Bung, the broker*s man, is 
a piece of very good Dickens. Of course there 
is humour, and very excellent fooling some of 
it is; and equally, of course, there is pathos, 
and some of that is not bad. Do I mean at all 
that this earlier work stands on the same level 
of excellence as the masterpieces of the writer? 
Clearly not. It were absurd to expect the 
stripling, half-furtively coming forward, first 
without a name at all, and then under the 
pseudonym of Boz,^ to write with the superb 
practised ease and mastery of the Charles 
Dickens who penned David Copperfield. By 
dint of doing blacksmith's work, says the 
French proverb, one becomes a blacksmith. 
The artist, like the handicraftsman, must learn 
his art. Much in the Sketches betrays inex- 
perience; or, perhaps, it would be more just to 
say, comparative clumsiness of hand. The de- 
scriptions, graphic as they undoubtedly are, 
lack for the most part the final imaginative 
touch; the kind of inbreathing of life which 
afterwards gave such individual charm to 
Dickens's word-painting. The humour is more 
obvious, less delicate, turns too readily on the 

^ It was the pet name of one of his brothers; that was 
why he took it. 



CHARLES DICKENS 81 

claim of the elderly spinster to be considered 
young, and the desire of all spinsters to get 
married. The pathos is often spoilt by over- 
emphasis and declamation. It lacks simplicity. 
For the Sketches published in The Old 
Monthly Magazine, Dickens got nothing, be- 
yond the pleasure of seeing himself in print. 
The Chronicle treated him somewhat more 
liberally, and, on his application, increased his 
salary, giving him, in view of his original con- 
tributions, seven guineas a week, instead of the 
five guineas which he had been drawing as a 
reporter. Not a particularly brilliant augmen- 
tation, perhaps, and one at which he must often 
have smiled in after years, when his pen was 
dropping gold as well as ink. Still, the addi- 
tion to his income was substantial, and the son 
of John Dickens must always, I imagine, have 
been in special need of money. Moreover the 
circumstances of the next few months would 
render any increased earnings doubly pleasant. 
For Dickens was shortly after this engaged to 
be married to Miss Catherine Hogarth, the 
daughter of one of his fellow-workers on the 
Chronicle, There had been, so Forster tells 
us, a previous very shadowy love aiFair in his 
career, — an aiFair so visionary indeed, and 



82 LIFE OF 

boyish, as scarcely to be worthy of mention in 
this history, save for three facts : first, that his 
devotion, dreamlike as it was, seems to have 
had love's highest practical effect in in- 
ducing him to throw his whole strength 
into the study of shorthand; secondly, 
that the lady of his love appears to have 
had some resemblance to Dora, the child- 
wife of David Copperfield; and thirdly, 
that he met her again long years after- 
wards, when time had worked its changes, and 
the glamour of love had" left his eyes, and that 
to that meeting we owe the passages in Little 
Dorrit relating to poor Flora. This, how- 
ever, is a.parenthesis. The engagement to Miss 
Hogarth was neither shadowy nor unreal — an 
engagement only in dreamland. Better for 
both, perhaps — who knows? — if it had been. 
Ah me, if one could peer into the future, how 
many weddings there are at which tears would 
be more appropriate than smiles and laughter ! 
Would Charles Dickens and Catherine Ho- 
garth have f oreborne to plight their troth, one 
wonders, if they could have foreseen how 
slowly and surely the coming years were to 
sunder their hearts and lives ? — They were mar- 
ried on 2d April, 1836. 



CHARLES DICKENS 83 

This date again leads me to a time subse- 
quent to the publication of the first number 
of Pickwick which had appeared a day or 
two before ; — and again I refrain from dealing 
with that great book. For before I do so, I 
wish to pause a brief space to consider what 
manner of man Charles Dickens was when he 
suddenly broke on the world in his full popu- 
larity; and also what were the influences, 
for good and evil, which his early career 
had exercised upon his character and in- 
tellect. 

What manner of man he was? In outward 
aspect all accounts agree that he was singu- 
larly, noticeably prepossessing — ^bright, ani- 
mated, eager, with energy and talent written 
in every line of his face. Such he was when 
Forster saw him, on the occasion of their first 
meeting, when Dickens was acting as spokes- 
man for tlie insurgent reporters engaged on 
the Mirror. So Carlyle, who met him at dinner 
shortly after this, and was no flatterer, sketches 
him for us with a pen of unwonted kindliness. 
' He is a fine little fellow — Boz, I think. Clear, 
blue, intelligent eyes, eyebrows that he arches 
amazingly, large protrusive rather loose mouth, 
a face of most extreme mobility, which he 



84 LIFE OF 

shuttles about — eyebrows, eyes, mouth and all 
— in a very singular manner while speaking. 
Surmount this with a loose coil of common- 
coloured hair, and set it on a small compact 
figure, very small, and dressed a la D'Orsay 
rather than well — this is Pickwick. For the 
rest, a quiet, shrewd-looking little fellow, who 
seems to guess pretty well what he is and what 
others are.' ^ Is not this a graphic little pic- 
ture, and characteristic even to the touch about 
D'Orsay, the dandy French Count? For 
Dickens, like the young men of the time — • 
Disraeli, Bulwer, and the rest — was a great 
fop. We, of these degenerate days, shall never 
see again that antique magnificence in coloured 
velvet waistcoats. 

But to return. Dickens, it need scarcely be 
said, had by this long out-lived the sickliness 
of his earlier years. The hardships and trials 
of his childhood and boyhood had served but 
to brace his young manhood, knitting the frame 
and strengthening the nerves. Light and 
small, as Carlyle describes him, he was wiry 
and very active, and could bear without injury 
an amount of intellectual work and bodily 

' Froude's Thomas Carlyle: A History of his Life in 
London. 



CHARLES DICKENS 85 

fatigue that would have killed many men of 
seemingly stronger build. And as what might 
have seemed unfortunate in his youth had 
helped perchance to develop his physical 
powers, so had it assisted to strengthen his 
character and foster his genius. I go back 
here to the point from which I started. No 
doubt a weaker man would have been crushed 
by such a youth. He would have been indo- 
lently content to remain a warehouse drudge, 
would have listlessly fallen into his father's 
ways about money, would have had no ambition 
beyond his desk and salary as a lawyer's clerk, 
would have never cared to piece together and 
supplement the scattered scraps of his educa- 
tion, would have rested on his oars when he 
had once shot into the waters of ordinary 
journalism. 

With Dickens it was not so. The al- 
chemy of a fine nature had transmuted his 
disadvantages into gold. To him the lessons 
of such a childhood and boyhood as he had had, 
were energy, self-reliance, a determination to 
overcome all obstacles, to fight the battles of 
life, in all honour and rectitude, so as to win. 
From the muddle of his father's affairs he had 
taken away a lesson of method, order, and 



86 LIFE OF 

punctuality in business and other arrange- 
ments. ' What is worth doing at all is worth 
doing well,' was not only one of his favourite 
maxims — it was the rule of his life. 

And for what was to be his life work, what 
better preparation could there have been than 
that which he received? I am far from recom- 
mending warehouses, squalid solitary lodgings, 
pawnshops, debtors' prisons, — if such could 
now be found, — ill-conducted private schools, 
— which probably could be found, — attorneys' 
offices, and the hand-to-mouth of journalism, 
as constituting generally the highest ideal of 
a liberal education. I am equally far from 
asserting that the majority of men do not re- 
quire more training of a purely scholastic kind 
than fell to Dickens's lot. But Dickens was 
not a bookish man. His genius did not lie in 
that direction. To have forced him unduly 
into the world of books would have made him, 
doubtless, an average scholar, but might have 
weakened his hold on life. Such a risk was 
certainly not worth the running. Fate ar- 
ranged it otherwise. What he was above all 
was a student of the world of men, a pas- 
sionately keen observer of the ways of hu- 
manity. Men were to be his books, his special 



CHARLES DICKENS 87 

branch of knowledge ; and in order to graduate 
and take high honours in that school, I repeat, 
he could have had no better training. Not only 
had he passed through a range of most un- 
wonted experiences, experiences calculated to 
quicken to the uttermost his superb faculties 
of observation and insight; but he had been 
placed in sympathetic communication vdth a 
strange assortment of characters, lying quite 
out of the usual ken of the literary classes. 
Knowledge and sympathy, the seeing eye and 
the feeling heart — were these nothing to Iiave 
acquired? 

That so abnormal an education can have been 
entirely without drawbacks, it is no part of my 
purpose to affirm. Tossed, as one may say, to 
sink or swim amid the waves of life, where 
those waves ran turbid and brackish, Dickens 
had emerged strengthened, triumphant. But 
that some little signs should not remain of the 
straining and effort with which he had won the 
land, w-as scarcely to be expected. He him- 
self, in his more confidential communications 
with Forster, seems to avow a consciousness 
that this was so ; and Forster, though he speaks 
guardedly, lovingly, appears to be of opinion 
that a certain self-assertiveness and fierce in- 



88 LIFE OF 

tolerance of advice or control * occasionally 
discernible in his friend, might justly be at- 
tributed to the harsh influence of early strug- 
gles and privations. But what then? That 
system of education has yet to be devised which 
shall mould this poor human clay of ours into 
flawless shapes of use and beauty. A man may 
be considered fortunate indeed, when his train- 
ing has left in him only what the French call 
the * defects of his virtues,' that is, the exag- 
geration of his good qualities till they turn into 
faults. Without his immense strength of pur- 
pose and iron will, Dickens might never have 
emerged from obscurity, and the world would 
have been very distinctly the poorer. One can- 

* ' I have heard Dickens described by those who knew 
him,' says Mr. Edmund Yates, in his Recollections, 
' as aggressive, imperious, and intolerant, and I can 
comprehend the accusation. . . . He was imperious in 
the sense that his life was conducted on the sic volo sic 
jubeo principle, and that everything gave way before 
him. The society in which he mixed, the hours which 
he kept, the opinions which he held, his likes and dis- 
likes, his ideas of what should or should not be, were all 
settled by himself, not merely for himself, but for all 
those brought into connection with him, and it was never 
imagined they could be called in question. . . . He had 
immense powers of will.' 



CHARLES DICKENS 89 

not be very sorry that he possessed these gifts 
in excess. 

And now, at last, having slightly sketched 
the history of his earlier years, and endeavoured 
to show, however imperfectly, what influences 
had gone to the formation of his character, I 
proceed to consider the book that lifted him 
to fame and fortune. The years of appren- 
ticeship are over, and the master-workman 
brings forth his finished work in its flower of 
perfection. Let us study Pickwick. 



90 LIFE OF. 



CHAPTER III 

OICKENS has told us, in his preface to 
the later editions, much of how Pick- 
wick came to be projected and pub- 
lished. It was in this wise: Seymour, a 
caricaturist of very considerable merit, though 
not, as we should now consider, in the first rank 
of the great caricaturists, had proposed to 
Messrs. Chapman and Hall, then just starting 
on their career as publishers, a ' series of Cock- 
ney sporting plates.' Messrs. Chapman and 
Hall entertained the idea favourably, but 
opined that the plates would require illustra- 
tive letter-press; and casting about for some 
suitable author, bethought themselves of 
Dickens, whose tales and sketches had been 
exciting some little sensation in the world of 
journalism; and who had, indeed, already 
written for the firm a story, the Tuggs at 
Ramsgate, which may be read among the 
Sketches. Accordingly Mr. Hall called on 
Dickens for the purpose of proposing the 
scheme. This would be in 1835, towards the 



CHARLES DICKENS 91 

latter end of the year ; and Dickens, who had 
apparently left the paternal roof for some lit- 
tle time, was living bachelorwise, in Furnival's 
Inn. What was his astonishment, when Mr. 
Hall came in, to find he was the same person 
who had sold him the copy of the magazine 
containing his first story — that memorable 
copy at which he had looked, in Westminster 
Hall, through eyes bedimmed with joyful 
tears. Such coincidences always had for 
Dickens a peculiar, almost a superstitious, in- 
terest. The circumstance seemed of happy 
augury to both the ' high contracting parties.' 
Publisher and author were for the nonce on 
the best of terms. The latter, no doubt, saw 
his opening; was more than ready to under- 
take the work, and had no quarrel with the re- 
muneration offered. But even then he was not 
the man to plaj^ second fiddle to anybody. Be- 
fore they parted, he had quite succeeded in 
turning the tables on Sej^mour. The original 
proposal had been that the artist should pro- 
duce four caricatures on sporting subjects 
every month, and that the letter-press should 
be in illustration of the caricatures. Dickens 
got Mr. Hall to agree to reverse that position. 
He, Dickens, was to have the command of the 



^M 



92 LIFE OF 

story, and the artist was to illustrate him. How 
far these altered relations would have worked 
quite smoothly if Seymour had lived, and if 
Dickens's story had not so soon assumed the 
proportions of a colossal success, it is idle to 
speculate. Seymour died by his own hand be- 
fore the second number was published, and so 
ceased to be in a position to assert himself. It 
was, however, in deference to the peculiar bent 
of his art that Mr. Winkle, with his disastrous 
sporting proclivities, made part of the first con- 
ception of the book; and it is also very sig- 
nificant of the book's origin, that the design 
on the green wrapper in which the monthly 
parts made their appearance, should have had 
a purely sporting character, and exhibited Mr. 
Pickwick sleepily fishing in a punt, and Mr. 
Winkle shooting at what looks like a cock- 
sparrow, — the whole surrounded by a chaste 
arabesque of guns, rods, and landing-nets. 
To Seymour, too, we owe the portrait of Mr. 
Pickwick, which has impressed that excellent 
old gentleman's face and figure upon all our 
memories. 

But to return to Dickens's interview with 
Mr. Hall. They seem to have parted in 
mutual satisfaction. At least it is certain 



CHARLES DICKENS 98 

Dickens was satisfied, for in a letter written, 
apparently on the same day, to ' my dearest 
Kate,' he thus sums up the proposals of the 
publishers : ' They have made me an offer of 
fourteen pounds a month to write and edit a 
new publication they contemplate, entirely by 
myself, to be published monthly, and each 
number to contain four wood-cuts. . . . 
The work will be no joke, but the emolument 
is too tempting to resist.' ^ 

So, little thinking how soon he would begin 
to regard the ' emolument ' as ludicrously in- 
adequate, he set to work on Pickwick. The 
first part was published on 31 March or 1 
April, 1836. 

The part seems scarcely to have created any 
sensation. Mr. James Grant, the novelist, says 
indeed, that the first five parts were * a dead 
failure,' and that the publishers were even de- 
bating whether the enterprise had not better be 
abandoned altogether, when suddenly Sam 
Weller appeared upon the scene, and turned 
their gloom into laughter. Be that as it may, 
certain it is that before many months had 
passed, Messrs. Chapman and Hall must have 
been thoroughly confirmed in a policy of per- 

* See the Letters published by Chapman & Hall. 



94 LIFE OF 

severance. ' The first order for Part I.,' that 
is, the first order for binding, ' was,' says the 
bool?:binder who executed the work, ' for four 
hundred copies only.' The order for Part XV. 
had risen to forty thousand. All contemporary 
accounts agree that the success was sudden, 
immense. The author, like Lord Byron, some 
twenty-five years before, ' awoke and found 
himself famous.' Young as he was, not having 
yet numbered more than twenty-four summers, 
he at one stride reached the topmost height of 
popularity. Everybody read his book. Every- 
body laughed over it. Everybody talked about 
it. Everybody felt, confusedly perhaps, but 
very surely, that a new and vital force had 
arisen in English literature. 

And English literature just then was in one 
of its times of slackness, rather than full flow. 
The great tide of the beginning of the century 
had ebbed. The tide of the Victorian age had 
scarcely begun to do more than ripple and 
flash on the horizon. Byron was dead, and 
Shelley and Keats and Coleridge and Lamb; 
Southey's life was on the decline ; Wordsworth 
had long executed his best work; while of the 
coming men, Carlyle, though in the plenitude 
of his power, having published Sartor Resar- 



CHARLES DICKENS 95 

tuSj had not yet published his French Revolu- 
tion/ or dehvered his lectures on the ' Heroes,' 
and was not yet in the plenitude of his fame 
and influence; and Macaulay, then in India, 
was known only as the essayist and politician; 
and Lord Tennyson and the Brownings were 
more or less names of the future. Looking 
especially at fiction, the time may be said to 
have been waiting for its master-novelist. Five 
years had gone by since the good and great Sir 
Walter Scott had been laid to rest in Dryburgh 
Abbey, there to sleep, as is most fit, amid the 
ruins of that old Middle Age world he loved 
so well, with the babble of the Tweed for 
lullaby. Nor had any one shown himself of 
stature to step into his vacant place, albeit 
Bulwer, more precocious even than Dickens, 
was already known as the author of Pelham, 
Eugene Aram^ and the Last Days of 
Pompeii; and Disraeli had written Vivian 
Grey, and his earlier books; while Thackeray, 
Charlotte Bronte, Kingsley, George Eliot 
were all, of course, to come later. No, there 
was a vacant throne among the novelists. Here 
was the hour — and here, too, was the man. In 

2 It was finished in January, 1837, and not published 
till six months afterwards. 



96 LIFE OF 

virtue of natural kingship he took up his 
sceptre unquestioned. 

Still, it may not be superfluous to inquire 
into the why and wherefore of his success. All 
effects have a cause. What was the cause of 
this special phenomenon? In the first place, 
the admirable freshness of the book won its 
way into every heart. There is a fervour of 
youth and healthy good spirits about the whole 
thing. In a former generation, Byron had 
uttered his wail of despair over a worthless 
world. We, in our own time, have got back to 
the dreary point of considering whether life 
be worth living. Here was a writer who had 
no such misgivings. For him life was pleasant, 
useful, full of delight — to be not only toler- 
ated, but enjoyed. He liked its sights, its play 
of character, its adventures — afl*ected no su- 
periority to its amusements and convivialities 
— thoroughly laid himself out to please and to 
be pleased. And his characters were in the 
same mood. Their fund of animal spirits 
seemed inexhaustible. For life's jollities they 
were never unprepared. No doubt there were 
* mighty mean moments ' in their existence, as 
there have been in the existence of most of us. 
It cannot have been pleasant to Mr. Winkle 



CHARLES DICKENS 97 

to have his eye blackened by the obstreperous 
cabman. !Mr. Tracy Tupman probably felt a 
passing pang when jilted by the maiden aunt 
in favour of the audacious Jingle. No man 
would elect to occupy the position of defend- 
ant in an action for breach of promise, or pre- 
fer to sojourn in a debtors' prison. But how 
jauntily do Mr. Pickwick and his friends shake 
off such discomforts ! How buoyantly do they 
override the billows that beset their course! 
And what excellent digestions they have, and 
how slightly do they seem to suffer the next 
day from any little excesses in the matter of 
milk punch! 

Then besides the good spirits and good tem- 
per, there is Dickens's royal gift of humour. 
As some actors have only to show their face 
and utter a word or two, in order to convulse 
an audience with merriment, so here does 
almost every sentence hold good and honest 
laughter. Not, perhaps, objects the superfine 
and too dainty critic, humour of the most deli- 
cate sort — not humour that for its rare and 
exquisite quality can be placed beside the 
masterpieces in that kind of Lamb, or Sterne, 
or Goldsmith, or Washington Irving. Granted 
freely; not humour of that special character. 



98 LIFE OF 

But very good humour nevertheless, the thor- 
oughly popular humour of broad comedy and 
obvious farce — the humour that finds its ac- 
count where absurd characters are placed in 
ridiculous situations, that delights in the oddi- 
ties of the whimsical and eccentric, that irradi- 
ates stupidity and makes dulness amusing. 
How thoroughly wholesome it is too! To be 
at the same time merry and wise, says the old 
adage, is a hard combination. Dickens was 
both. With all his boisterous merriment, his 
volleys of inextinguishable laughter, he never 
makes game of what is at all worthy of 
respect. Here, as in his later books, right 
is right, and wrong wrong, and he is never 
tempted to jingle his jester's bell out of 
season, and make right look ridiculous. 
And if the humour of Pickwick be whole- 
some, it is also most genial and kindly. 
We have here no acrid cynic, sneeringly point- 
ing out the plague spots of humanity, and 
showing pleasantly how even the good are 
tainted with evil. Rather does Dickens delight 
in finding some touch of goodness, some linger- 
ing memory of better things, some hopeful 
aspiration, some trace of unselfish devotion in 
characters where all seems soddened and lost. 



CHARLES DICKENS 99 

In brief, the laughter is the laughter of one 
who sees the foibles, and even the vices of his 
fellow-men, and yet looks on them lovingly 
and helpfully. 

So much the first readers of Pickwick 
might note as the book unfolded itself to them, 
part by part; and they might also note one or 
two things besides. They might note — they 
could scarcely fail to do so — that though there 
was a touch of caricature in nearly all the 
characters, yet those characters were, one and 
all, wonderfully real, and very much alive. It 
was no world of shadows to which the author 
introduced them. Mr. Pickwick had a very 
distinct existence, and so had his three friends, 
and Bob Sawyer, and Benjamin Allen, and 
Mr. Jingle, and Tony Weller, and all the 
swarm of minor characters. While as to Sam 
Weller, if it be really true that he averted im- 
pending ruin from the book, and turned defeat 
into victory, one can only say that it was like 
him. When did he ever ' stint stroke ' in 
' f oughten field ' ? By what array of adverse 
circumstances was he ever taken at a disad- 
vantage? To have created a character of this 
vitality, of this individual force, would be a 
feather in the cap of any novelist who ever 



100 LIFE OF 

lived. Something I think of Dickens's own 
blood passed into this special progeniture of 
his. It has been irreverently said that Falstaff 
might represent Shakespeare in his cups, just 
as Hamlet might represent him in his more 
sober moments. So I have always had a kind 
of fancy that Sam Weller might be regarded 
as Dickens himself seen in a certain aspect — a 
sort of Dickens, shall I say? — in an humbler 
sphere of life, and who had never devoted him- 
self to literature. There is in both the same 
energy, pluck, essential goodness of heart, fer- 
tility of resource, abundance of animal spirits, 
and also an imagination of a peculiar kind, in 
which wit enters as a main ingredient. And 
having noted how highly vitalized were the 
characters in Pickwick^, I think the first 
readers might also fairly be expected to note, 
— and, in fact, it is clear from Dickens's pre- 
face that they did note — how greatly the book 
increased in scope and power as it proceeded. 
The beginning was conceived almost in a spirit 
of farce. The incidents and adventures had 
scarcely any other object than to create amuse- 
ment. Mr. Pickwick himself appeared on the 
scene with fantastic honours and the badge of 
absurdity, as ' the man who had traced to their 



CHARLES DICKENS 101 

source the mighty ponds of Hampstead, and 
agitated the scientific world with the Theory 
of Tittlebats.' But in all this there is a grad- 
ual change. Mr. Pickwick is presented to us 
latterly as an exceedingly sound-headed as well 
as sound-hearted old gentleman, whom we 
should never think of associating with the 
sources of Hampstead Ponds or any other 
folly. While in such scenes as those at the 
Fleet Prison, the author is clearly endeavour- 
ing to do much more than raise a laugh. He 
is sounding the deeper, more tragic chords in 
human feeling. 

Ah, if we add to all this — to the freshness, 
the * go,' the good spirits, the keen observation, 
the graphic painting, the humour, the vitality 
of the characters, the gradual development of 
power — if we add to all this that something 
which is in all, and greater than all, viz., genius, 
and genius of a highly popular kind, then we 
shall have no difficulty in understanding why 
everybody read Pickwick, and how it came 
to pass that its publishers made some 20,000Z. 
by a work that they had once thought of 
abandoning as worthless.^ 

^ They acknowledged to Dickens that they had made 
14,000Z. by the sale of the monthly parts alon?. 



102 LIFE OF 



CHAPTER IV 

OICKENS was not at all the man to rest 
on his oars while Pickwick was giv- 
ing such a magnificent impetus to the 
boat that contained his fortunes. The amount 
of work which he accomplished in the years 
1836, 1837, 1838, and 1839 is, if we consider 
its quality, amazing. Pickwick^ as we have 
seen, was begun early in the first of these years, 
and its publication continued till the November 
of 1837. Independently of his work on Pick- 
wick j he was, in the year 1836, engaged in 
the arduous profession of a reporter till the 
close of the parliamentary session, and also 
wrote a pamphlet on Sabbatarianism, a farce 
in two acts, ' The Strange Gentleman,' for the 
St. James's Theatre, and a comic opera, ' The 
Village Coquettes,' which was set to music by 
Hullah. With the very commencement of 
1837 — Pickwick, it will be remembered, go- 
ing on all the while — he entered upon the duties 
of editor of Bentley^s Miscellany, and in the 
second number began the publication of 



CHARLES DICKENS 103 

Oliver Twist, which was continued into the 
early months of 1839, when his connection with 
the magazine ceased. In the April of 1838, 
and simultaneously, of course, with Oliver 
Twist, appeared the first part of Nicholas 
Nicklehy — the last part appearing in the 
October of the following year. Three novels 
of more than full size and of first-rate import- 
ance, in less than four years, besides a good 
deal of other miscellaneous work — certainly 
that was ' good going.' The pace was de- 
cidedly fast. No wonder that The Quarterly 
Review, even so early as October, 1837, was 
tempted to croak about ' Mr. Dickens ' as 
■s^Titing ' too often and too fast, and putting 
forth in their crude, unfinished, undigested 
state, thoughts, feelings, observations, and 
plans which it required time and study to ma- 
ture,' and to warn him that as he had * risen 
like a rocket,' so he was in danger of ' coming 
down like the stick.' No wonder, I say, and 
yet to us now, how unjust the accusation 
appears, and how false the prophecy. Rapidly 
as those books were executed, Dickens, like 
the real artist that he was, had put into them 
his best work. There was no scamping. The 
critics of the time judged superficially, not 



104 LIFE OF 

making allowance for the ample fund of ob- 
servations he had amassed, for the genuine 
fecundity of his genius, and for the admirable 
industry of an extremely industrious man. 
The World's Workers — there exists under 
that general designation a series of short biog- 
raphies, for which Miss Dickens has written a 
sketch of her father's Hfe. To no one could 
the description more fittingly apply. Through- 
out his life he worked desperately hard. He 
possessed, in a high degree, the ' infinite fac- 
ulty for taking pains,' which is so great an ad- 
junct to genius, though it is not, as the good 
Sir Joshua Reynolds held, genius itself. Thus 
what he had done rapidly was done well; and, 
for the rest, the writer, who had yet to give the 
world Martin Chuzzlewit, The Christmas 
Carol, David Copperfield, and Dombey, was 
not ' coming down like a stick.' There were 
many more stars, and of very brilliant colours, 
to be showered out by that rocket; and the 
stick has not even yet fallen to the ground.* 
Naturally, with the success of Pickwick, 

^ I think critics, and perhaps I myself, have been a 
little hard on this Quarterly Reviewer. He did not, after 
all, say that Dickens would come down like a stick, only 
that he might do so if he wrote too fast and furiously. 



CHARLES DICKENS 105 

came a great change in Dickens's pecuniary 
position. He had, as we have seen, been glad 
enough, before he began the book, to close 
with the offer of 14Z. for each monthly part. 
That sum was afterwards increased to ISl.j 
and the two first payments seem to have been 
made in advance for the purpose of helping 
him to defray the expenses of his marriage. 
But as the sale leapt up, the publishers them- 
selves felt that such a rate of remuneration was 
altogether insufficient, and sent him first and 
last, a goodly number of supplementary 
cheques, for sums amounting in the aggregate, 
as they computed, to 3000Z., and as Forster 
computes to about 2500Z. This Dickens, who, 
to use his own words, * never undervalued his 
own work,* considered a very inadequate per- 
centage on their gains — forgetting a little, per- 
haps, that the risks had been wholly theirs, and 
that he had been more than content with the 
original bargain. Similarly he was soon ut- 
terly dissatisfied with his arrangements with 
Bentley about the editorship of the Miscellany 
and Oliver Twist, — arrangements which had 
been entered into in August, 1836, while Pick- 
wick was in progress ; and he utterly refused to 
let that publisher have Gabriel Varden, The 



106 LIFE OF 

Locksmith of London (Barnahy Rudge) on 
the terms originally agreed upon. With Mac- 
rone also, who had made some 4000Z. by the 
Sketches, and given him about 400Z.^ he was no 
better pleased, especially when that enterpris- 
ing gentleman threatened a re-issue in monthly 
parts, and so compelled him to re-purchase the 
copyright for 2000Z. But however much he 
might consider himself ill-treated by the pub- 
lishing fraternity, he was, of course, rapidly 
getting far richer than he had been, and so able 
to enlarge his mode of life. He had begun, 
modestly enough, by taking his wife to live 
with him in his bachelor's quarters in Furni- 
val's Inn, — much as Tommy Traddles, in Da- 
vid Copperfieldj, took his wife to live in cham- 
bers at Gray's Inn; and there, in Furnival's 
Inn, his first child, a boy, was born on the 6th 
of January, 1837. But in the March of that 
year he moved to a more commodious dwelling, 
at 48 Doughty Street, where he remained till 
the end of 1839, when still increasing means 
enabled him to move to a still better house at 
1 Devonshire Terrace, Regent's Park. But 
the house in Doughty Street must have been 
endeared to him by many memories. It was 
there, on 7 May, 1837, that he lost, at 



CHARLES DICKENS 107 

the early age of seventeen, and quite suddenly, 
a sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth, to whom he was 
greatly attached. The blow fell so heavily at 
the time as to incapacitate him from all work, 
and delayed the publication of one of the num- 
bers of Pickwick. Nor was the sorrow only 
sharp and transient. He speaks of her in the 
preface to the first edition of that book. Her 
spirit seemed to be hovering near as he stood 
looking at Niagara. He felt her hallowing 
influence when in danger of growing too much 
elated by his first reception in America. She 
came back to him in dreams in Italy. Her 
image remained in his heart, unchanged by 
time, as he declared, to the very end. She 
represented to his mind all that was pure and 
lovely in opening womanhood, and lives, in 
the world created by his art, as the Little Nell 
of The Old Curiosity Shop. It was in 
Doughty Street, too, that he began to gather 
round him the circle of friends whose names 
seem almost like a muster-roll of the famous 
men and women in the first thirty years of 
Queen Victoria's reign. I shall not enumerate 
them. The list of writers, artists, actors, 
would be too long. But this at least it would 
be unjust not to note, that among his friends 



108 LIFE OF 

were included nearly all those who by any 
stretch of fancy could be regarded as his 
rivals in the fields of humour and fiction. 
With Washington Irving, Hood, Douglas 
Jerrold, Lord Lytton, Harrison Ainsworth, 
Mr. Wilkie Collins, Mrs. Gaskell, and, save 
for a passing foolish quarrel, with Thackeray, 
the novelist who really was his peer, he main- 
tained the kindliest and most cordial relations. 
Nor when George Eliot published her first 
books, The Scenes of Clerical Life and 
Adam Bede, did any one acknowledge their 
excellence more freely. Petty jealousies 
found no place in the nature of this great 
writer. 

It was also while living at Doughty Street 
that he seems, in great measure, to have 
formed those habits of work and relaxation 
which every artist fashions so as to suit his 
own special needs and idiosyncrasies. His 
favourite time for work was the morning, be- 
tween the hours of breakfast and lunch; and 
though, at this particular period, the enormous 
pressure of his engagements compelled him to 
work * double tides,' and often far into the 
night, yet he was essentially a day-worker, not 
a night-worker. Like the great German poet 



CHARLES DICKENS 109 

Goethe, he preferred to exercise his art in the 
fresh morning hours, when the dewdrops, as 
it were, lay bright upon his imagination and 
fancy. And for relaxation and sedative, when 
he had thoroughly worn himself out with 
mental toil, he would have recourse to the 
hardest bodily exercise. At first riding seems to 
have contented him — fifteen miles out and fif- 
teen miles in, with a halt at some road-side inn 
for refreshment. But soon walking took the 
place of riding, and he became an indefatiga- 
ble pedestrian. He would think nothing of 
a walk of twenty or thirty miles, and that not 
merely in the vigorous heyday of youth, but 
afterwards, to the very last. He was always 
on those alert, quick feet of his, perambulating 
London from end to end, and in every direc- 
tion; perambulating the suburbs, perambulat- 
ing the ' greater London ' that lies within a 
radius of twenty miles, round the central core 
of metropolitan houses. In short, he was 
everywhere, in all weathers, at all hours. Nor 
was London, smaller and greater, his only 
walking field. He would walk wherever he 
was — walked through and through Genoa, 
and all about Genoa, when he lived there; 
knew every inch of the Kent country round 



110 LIFE OF 

Broadstairs and round Gad's Hill — was, as I 
have said, always, always, always on his feet. 
But if he would pedestrianize everywhere, 
London remained the walking ground of his 
heart. As Dr. Johnson held that nothing 
equalled a stroll down Fleet Street, so did 
Dickens, sitting in full view of Genoa's per- 
fect bay, and with the blue Mediterranean 
sparkling at his feet, turn in thought for in- 
spiration to his old haunts. ' Never,' he writes 
to Forster, when about to begin The Chimes^ 
' never did I stagger so upon the threshold be- 
fore. I seem as if I had plucked myself out 
of my proper soil when I left Devonshire 
Terrace, and could take root no more until I 
return to it. . . . Did I tell you how 
many fountains we have here? No matter. 
If they played nectar, they wouldn't please me 
half so well as the West Middlesex Water- 
works at Devonshire Terrace. . . . Put me 
down on Waterloo Bridge at eight o'clock in 
the evening, with leave to roam about as long 
as I like, and I would come home, as you know, 
panting to go on. I am sadly strange as it is, 
and can't settle.' ' Eight o'clock in the even- 
ing,' — that points to another of his peculiari- 
ties. As he liked best to walk in London, so 



CHARLES DICKENS 111 

he liked best to walk at night. The darkness 
of the great city had a strange fascination for 
him. He never grew tired of it, would find 
pleasure and refreshment, when most weary 
and jaded, in losing himself in it, in abandon- 
ing himself to its mysteries. Looked at with 
this knowledge, the opening of the Old Curios- 
ity Shop becomes a passage of autobiography. 
And how all these wanderings must have 
served him in his art ! Remember what a keen 
observer he was, perhaps one of the keenest 
that ever lived, and then think what food for 
observation he would thus be constantly col- 
lecting. To the eye that knows how to see, 
there is no stage where so many scenes from 
the drama of life are being always enacted as 
the streets of London. Dickens frequented 
that theatre very assiduously, and of his power 
of sight there can be no question. 



112 LIFE OF 



CHAPTER V 

QICKWICK had been a novel without 
any plot. The story, if story it can 
be called, bore every trace of its hasty 
origin. Scene succeeded scene, and incident 
incident, and Mr. Pickwick and his three 
friends were hurried about from place to 
place, and through adventures of all kinds, 
without any particularly defined purpose. In 
truth, many people, and myself among the 
number, find some difficulty in reading the 
book as a connected narrative, and prefer to 
take it piecemeal. But in Oliver Twist there 
is a serious eff'ort to work out a coherent plot, 
and real unity of conception. Whether that 
conception be based on probability, is another 
point. Oliver is the illegitimate son of a 
young lady who has lapsed from virtue under 
circumstances of great temptation, but still 
lapsed from virtue, and who dies in giving 
him birth. He is brought up as a pauper child 
in a particularly ill-managed workhouse, and 
apprenticed to a low undertaker. Thence he 



CHARLES DICKENS 113 

escapes, and walks to London, where he falls 
in with a gang of thieves. His legitimate 
brother, an unutterable scoundrel, happens to 
see him in London, and recognizing him by a 
likeness to their common father, bribes the 
thieves to recapture him when he has escaped 
from their clutches. Now I would rather not 
say whether I consider it quite likely that a 
boy of this birth and nurture would fly at a 
boy much bigger than himself in vindication 
of the fair fame of a mother whom he had 
never known, or would freely risk his life to 
warn a sleeping household that they were be- 
ing robbed, or would, on all occasions, exhibit 
the most excellent manners and morals, and a 
delicacy of feeling that is quite dainty. But 
this is the essence of the book. To show purity 
and goodness of disposition as self-sufficient 
in themselves to resist all adverse influences, 
is Dickens's main object. Take Oliver's sweet 
uncontaminated character away, and the story 
crumbles to pieces. With mere improbabilities 
of plot, I have no quarrel. Of course it is not 
likely that the boy, on the occasion of his first 
escape from the thieves, should be rescued by 
his father's oldest friend, and, on the second 
occasion, come across his aunt. But such co- 



114 LIFE OF 

incidences must be accepted in any story; they 
violate no truth of character. I am afraid I 
can't say as much of Master Oliver's graces 
and virtues. 

With this reservation, however, how much 
there is in the book to which unstinted ad- 
miration can be given! As Pickwick first 
fully exhibited the humorous side of Dickens's 
genius, so Oliver Twist first fully exhibited its 
tragic side; — the pathetic side was to come 
somewhat later. The scenes at the workhouse ; 
at the thieves' dens in London; the burglary; 
the murder of poor Nancy; the escape and 
death of the horror-haunted Sikes, — all are 
painted with a master's hand. And the book, 
like its predecessor, and like those that were 
to follow, contains characters that have passed 
into common knowledge as tj^pes, — characters 
of the keenest individuality, and that yet seem 
in themselves to sum up a whole class. Such 
are Bill Sikes, whose ruffianism has an almost 
epic grandeur; and black-hearted Fagin, the 
Jew, receiver of stolen goods and trainer of 
youth in the way they should not go ; and Mas- 
ter Dawkins, the Artful Dodger. Such, too, 
is Mr. Bumble, greatest and most unhappy 
of beadles. 



CHARLES DICKENS 115 

Comedy had predominated in Pickwick, 
tragedy in Oliver Twist. The more complete 
fusion of the two was effected in Nicholas 
Nickleby. But as the mighty actor Garrick, in 
the well-known picture by Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds, is drawn towards the more mirthful of 
the two sisters, so, here again, I think that 
comedy decidedly bears away the palm, — 
though tragedy is not beaten altogether with- 
out a struggle either. Here is the story as it 
unfolds itself. The two heroes are Ralph 
Nickleby and his nephew Nicholas. They 
stand forth, almost from the beginning, as 
antagonists, in battle array the one against 
the other; and the story is, in the main, a his- 
tory of the campaigns between them — cun- 
ning and greed being mustered on the one 
side, and young, generous courage on the 
other. At first Nicholas believes in his uncle, 
who promises to befriend Nicholas's mother 
and sister, and obtains for Nicholas himself a 
situation as usher in a Yorkshire school kept 
by one Squeers. But the young fellow's gorge 
rises at the sickening cruelty exercised in the 
school, and he leaves it, having first beaten Mr. 
Squeers, — leaves it followed by a poor shat- 
tered creature called Smike. Meanwhile 



116 LIFE OF 

Ralph, the usurer, befriends his sister-in-law 
and niece after his own fashion, and tries to 
use the latter's beauty in furtherance of his 
trade as a money-lender. Nicholas discovers 
his plots, frustrates all his schemes, rescues, 
and ultimately marries, a young lady who had 
been immeshed in one of them; and Ralph, at 
last, utterly beaten, commits suicide on find- 
ing that Smike, through whom he had been 
endeavouring all through to injure Nicholas, 
and who is now dead, was his own son. Such 
are the book's dry bones, its skeleton, which 
one is almost ashamed to expose thus nakedly. 
For the beauty of these novels lies not at all 
in the plot; it is in the incidents, situations, 
characters. And with beauty of this kind how 
richly dowered is Nicholas Nickleby! Take 
the characters alone. What lavish profusion 
of humour in the theatrical group that clusters 
round Mr. Vincent Crumules, the country 
manager; and in the Squeers family too; and 
in the little shop-world of Mrs. Mantalini, the 
fashionable dressmaker; and in Cheerible 
Brothers, the golden-hearted old merchants 
who take Nicholas into their counting-house. 
Then for single characters commend me to 
Mrs. Nickleby, whose logic, which some cyn- 



CHARLES DICKENS 117 

ics would call feminine, is positively sublime 
in its want of coherence ; and to John Browdie, 
the honest Yorkshire cornfactor, as good a 
fellow almost as Dandie Dinmont, the Border 
yeoman whom Scott made immortal. The 
high-life personages are far less successful. 
Dickens had small gift that way, and seldom 
succeeded in his society pictures. Nor, if the 
truth must be told, do I greatly care for the 
description of the duel between Sir Mulberry 
Hawk and Lord Verisopht, though it was 
evidently very much admired at the time and 
is quoted, as a favourable specimen of 
Dickens's style, in Charles Knight's Half- 
hours with the Best Authors. The writing is 
a little too tall. It lacks simplicity, as is some- 
times the case with Dickens, when he wants to 
be particularly impressive. 

And this leads me, by a kind of natural se- 
quence, to what I have to say about his next 
book, The Old Curiosity Shop; for here, again, 
though in a very much more marked degree, 
I fear I shall have to run counter to a popular 
opinion. 

But first a word as to the circumstances 
under which the book was published. Cast- 
ing about, after the conclusion of Nicholas 



118 LIFE OF 

Nicklehy, for further literary ventures, 
Dickens came to the conclusion that the public 
must be getting tired of his stories in monthlj'^ 
parts. It occurred to him that a weekly 
periodical, somewhat after the manner of Ad- 
dison's Spectator or Goldsmith's Bee^ and con- 
taining essays, stories, and miscellaneous 
papers, — to be written mainly, but not en- 
tirely, by himself, — would be just the thing to 
revive interest, and give his popularity a spur. 
Accordingly an arrangement was entered into 
with Messrs. Chapman and Hall, by which 
they covenanted to give him 50Z. for each 
weekly number of such a periodical, and half 
profits; — and the first number of Master 
Humphrey^ s Clock made its appearance in 
the April of 1840. Unfortunately Dickens 
had reckoned altogether without his host. The 
public were not to be cajoled. What they ex- 
pected from their favourite was novels, not 
essays, short stories, or sketches, however ad- 
mirable. The orders for the first number had 
amounted to seventy thousand; but they fell 
oiF as soon as it was discovered that Master 
Humphrey, sitting by his clock, had no in- 
tention of beguiling the world with a contin- 
uous narrative, — that the title, in short, did 



CHARLES DICKENS 119 

not stand for the title of a novel. Either the 
times were not ripe for the Household 
Words, which, ten years afterwards, proved 
to he such a great and permanent success, or 
Dickens had laid his plans hadly. Vainly did 
he put forth all his powers, vainly did he bring 
back upon the stage those old popular favour- 
ites, Mr. Pickwick, Sam Weller, and Tony 
We'ller. All was of no avail. Clearly, in 
order to avoid defeat, a change of front had 
become necessary. The novel of The Old 
Curiosity Shop was accordingly commenced 
in the fourth number of the Clock, and very 
soon acted the cuckoo's part of thrusting Mas- 
ter Humphrey and all that belonged to him out 
of the nest. He disappeared pretty well from 
the periodical, and when the novel was repub- 
lised, the whole machinery of the Clock had 
gone;— and with it I may add, some very 
characteristic and admirable writing. Dickens 
himself confessed that he ' winced a little,' 
when the ' opening paper, ... in which 
Master Humphrey described himself and his 
manner of hf e,' ' became the property of the 
trunkmaker and the butterman'; and most 
Dickens lovers will agree with me in rejoicing 
that the omitted parts have now at last been 



120 LIFE OF 

tardily rescued from unmerited neglect, and 
finds a place in the recently issued * Charles 
Dickens ' edition of the works. 

There is no hero in The Old Curiosity Shop, 
— unless Mr. Richard Swiveller, * perpetual 
grand-master of the Glorious ApoUos,' be the 
questionable hero; and the heroine is Little 
Nell, a child. Of Dickens's singular feeling 
for the pathos and humour of childhood, I 
have already spoken. Many novelists, per- 
haps one might even say, most novelists, have 
no freedom of utterance when they come to 
speak about children, do not know what to do 
with a child if it chances to stray into their 
pages. But how different with Dickens! He 
is never more thoroughly at home than with 
the little folk. Perhaps his best speech, and 
they all are good, is the one uttered at the 
dinner given on behalf of the Children's Hos- 
pital. Certainly there is no figure in Dombey 
and Son on which more loving care has been 
lavished than the figure of little Paul, and 
when the lad dies one quite feels that the light 
has gone out of the book. David Copperfield 
shorn of David's childhood and youth would 
be a far less admirable performance. The 
hero of Oliver Twist is a boy. Pip is a boy 



CHARLES DICKENS 121 

through a fair portion of Great Expectations. 
The heroine of The Old Curiosity Shop is, as 
I have just said, a girl. And of all these 
children, the one who seems, from the first, to 
have stood highest in popular favour, and 
won most hearts, is Little Nell. Ay me, what 
tears have been shed over her weary wander- 
ings with that absurd old gambling grand- 
father of hers; how many persons have sor- 
rowed over her untimely end as if she had been 
a daughter or a sister. High and low, literate 
and illiterate, over nearly all has she cast her 
spell. Hood, he who sang the Song of the 
Shirt, paid her the tribute of his admiration, 
and Jeffrey, the hard-headed old judge and 
editor of The Edinburgh Review, the tribute 
of his tears. Landor volleyed forth his thun- 
derous praises over her grave, likening her to 
Juliet and Desdemona. Nay, Dickens him- 
self sadly bewailed her fate, described himself 
as being the ' wretchedest of the wretched ' 
when it drew near, and shut himself from all 
society as if he had suffered a real bereave- 
ment. While as to the feeling which she has 
excited in the breasts of the illiterate, we may 
take Mr. Bret Harte's account of the haggard 
golddiggers by the roaring California camp 



122 LIFE OF 

fire, who throw down their cards to listen to 
her story, and, for the nonce, are softened and 
humanized/ — Such is the sympathy she has 
created. And for the description of her death 
and burial, as a superb piece of pathetic writ- 
ing, there has been a perfect chorus of praise, 
broken here and there no doubt by a discordant 
voice, but still of the loudest and most heart- 
felt. Did not Home, a poet better known to 
the last generation than to this, point out that 
though printed as prose, these passages were, 
perhaps as ' the result of harmonious accident,' 
essentially poetry, and * written in blank verse 
of irregular metres and rhythms, which 
Southey and Shelley and some other poets 
have occasionally adopted ' ? Did he not print 
part of the passages in this form, substituting 
only, as a concession to the conventionalities 
of verse, the word ' grandames ' for ' grand- 
mothers ' ; and did he not declare of one of the 
extracts so printed that it was ' worthy of the 
best passages in Wordsworth ' ? 

If it ' argues an insensibility ' to stand some- 
what unmoved among all these tears and ad- 
miration, I am afraid I must be rather pebble- 
hearted. To tell the whole damaging truth, 

■^ Dickens in Camp. 



CHARLES DICKENS 123 

I am, and always have been, only slightly 
affected by the story of Little Nell; have 
never felt any particular inclination to shed a 
tear over it, and consider the closing chapters 
as failing of their due effect, on me at least, 
because they are pitched in a key that is alto- 
gether too high and unnatural. Of course 
one makes a confession of this kind with diffi- 
dence. It is no light thing to stem the cur- 
rent of a popular opinion. But one can only 
go with the stream when one thinks the stream 
is flowing in a right channel. And here I 
think the stream is meandering out of its 
course. For me, Little Nell is scarcely more 
than a figure in cloudland. Possibly part of the 
reason why I do not feel as much sympathy 
with her as I ought, is because I do not seem 
to know her very well. With Paul Dombey I 
am intimately acquainted. I should recog- 
nize the child anywhere, should be on the best 
of terms with him in five minutes. Few things 
would give me greater pleasure than an hour's 
saunter by the side of his little invalid's car- 
riage along the Parade at Brighton. How we 
should laugh, to be sure, if we happened to 
come across Mr. Toots, and smile, too, if we 
met Feeder, B.A., and give a furtive glance of 



124 LIFE OF 

recognition at Glubb, the discarded charioteer. 
Then the classic CorneHa Blimber would pass, 
on her constitutional, and we should quail a 
little — at least I am certain / should — as she 
bent upon us her scholastic spectacles; and a 
glimpse of Dr. Blimber would chill us even 
more ; till — ah ! what's this ? Why does a flush 
of happiness mantle over my little friend's 
pale face? Why does he utter a faint cry of 
pleasure? Yes, there she is — he has caught 
sight of Floy running forward to meet him. — 
So am I led, almost instinctively, whenever 
the figure of Paul flashes into my mind, to 
think of him as a child I have actually known. 
But Nell — she has no such reality of existence. 
She has been etherealized, vapourized, rhapso- 
dized about, till the flesh and blood have gone 
out of her. I recognize her attributes, unsel- 
fishness, sweetness of disposition, gentleness. 
But these do not constitute a human being. 
They do not make up a recognizable individ- 
uality. If I met her in the street, I am afraid 
I should not know her; and if I did, I am sure 
we should both find it difficult to keep up a 
conversation. 

Do the passages describing her death and 
burial really possess the rhythm of poetry? 



CHARLES DICKENS 125 

That would seem to me, I confess, to be as ill 
a compliment as to say of a piece of poetry 
that it was really prose. The music of prose 
and of poetry are essentially different. They 
do not affect the ear in the same way. The 
one is akin to song, the other to speech. Give 
to prose the recurring cadences, the measure, 
and the rhythmic march of verse, and it be- 
comes bad prose without becoming good 
poetry.^ So, in fairness to Dickens, one is 
bound, as far as one can, to forget Home's 
misapplied praise. But even thus, and looking 
upon it as prose alone, can we say that the ac- 
count of Nell's funeral is, in the high artistic 
sense, a piece of good work? Here is an ex- 
tract : * And now the bell — the bell she had so 
often heard, by night and day, and listened to 
with solemn pleasure as a living voice — rang 
its remorseless toll, for her, so young, so beau- 
tiful, so good. Decrepit age, and vigorous 
life, and blooming yoiith, and helpless infancy, 
poured forth — on crutches, in the pride of 
strength and health, in the full blush of prom- 
ise, in the mere dawn of life — to gather round 

^ Dickens himself knew that he had a tendency to 
fall into blank verse in moments of excitement, and tried 
to guard against it. 



126 LIFE OF 

her tomb. Old men were there, whose eyes 
were dim and senses failing — grandmothers, 
who might have died ten years ago, and still 
been old, — the deaf, the blind, the lame, the 
palsied, the living dead in many shapes and 
forms, to see the closing of that earthly grave. 
What was the death it would shut in, to that 
which still could crawl and creep above it? ' 
Such is the tone throughout, and one feels in- 
clined to ask whether it is quite the appropriate 
tone in which to speak of the funeral of a 
child in a country churchyard. All this pomp 
of rhetoric seems to me — shall I say it? — as 
much out of place as if Nell had been buried 
like some great soldier or minister of state — 
with a hearse, all sable velvet and nodding 
plumes, drawn by a long train of sable steeds, 
and with a final discharge of artillery over the 
grave. The verbal honours paid here to the 
deceased are really not much less incongruous 
and out of keeping. Surely in such a subject, 
above all others, the pathos of simplicity 
would have been most effective. 

There are some, indeed, who deny to 
Dickens the gift of pathos altogether. Such 
persons acknowledge, for the most part a lit- 
tle unwillingly, that he was a master of hu- 



CHARLES DICKENS 127 

mour of the broader, more obvious kind. But 
they assert that all his sentiment is mawkish 
and overstrained, and that his efforts to com- 
pel our tears are so obvious as to defeat their 
own purpose. Now it will be clear, from what 
I have said about Little Nell, that I am capa- 
ble of appreciating the force of any criticism 
of this kind; nay, that I go so far as to ac- 
knowledge that Dickens occasionally lays him- 
self open to it. But go one inch beyond this 
I cannot. Of course we may, if we like, take 
up a position of pure stoicism, and deny pathos 
altogether, in life as in art. We may regard 
all human affairs but as a mere struggle for 
existence, and say that might makes right, and 
that the weak is only treated according to his 
deserts when he goes to the wall. We may 
hold that neither sorrow nor suffering call for 
any meed of sympathy. Such is mainly the 
attitude which the French novelist adopts to- 
wards the world of his creation.^ But once 
admit that feeling is legitimate; once allow 
that tears are due to those who have been 
crushed and left bleeding by this great world 
of ours as it goes crashing, blundering on its 

' M. Daudet, in many respects a follower of Dickens, 
is a fine and notable exception. 



128 LIFE OF 

way; once grant that the writer's art can 
properly embrace what Shakespeare calls * the 
pity of it/ the sorrows interwoven in all our 
human relationships; once acknowledge all 
this, and then I affirm, most confidently, that 
Dickens, working at his best, was one of the 
greatest masters of pathos who ever lived. I 
can myself see scarce a strained discordant note 
in the account of the short life and early death 
of Paul Dombey, and none in the description 
of the death of Paul Dombey 's mother, or in 
the story of Tiny Tim, or in the record of 
David Copperfield's childhood and boyhood. 
I consider the passage in American Notes de- 
scribing the traits of gentle kindliness among 
the emigrants as being nobly, pathetically elo- 
quent. Did space allow, I could support my 
position by quotations and example to any ex- 
tent. And my conclusion is that, though he 
failed with Little Nell, yet he succeeded else- 
where, and superbly. 

The number of Master Humphrey's Clock, 
containing the conclusion of The Old Curiosity 
Shop, appeared on the 17th of January, 1841, 
and Barndby JRudge began its course in the 
ensuing week. The first had been essentially 
a tale of modern life. All the characters that 



CHARLES DICKENS 129 

made a kind of background, mostly grotesque 
or hideous, for the figure of Little Nell, were 
characters of to-day, or at least of the day 
when the book was written ; for I must not for- 
get that that day ran into the past some six 
and forty years ago. Quilp, the dwarf, — and 
a far finer specimen of a scoundrel by the by, in 
every respect, than that poor stage villain 
Monks; Sampson Brass and his legal sister 
Sally, a goodly pair; Kit, golden-hearted and 
plain of body, who so barely escapes from the 
plot laid by the afore-mentioned worthies to 
prove him a thief; Chuckster, most lady-killing 
of notaries' clerks; Mrs. Jarley, the good- 
natured waxwork woman, in whose soul there 
would be naught save kindliness, only that she 
cannot bring herself to tolerate Punch and 
Judy; Short and Codlin, the Punch and Judy 
men; the little misused servant, whom Dick 
Swiveller in his grandeur creates a marchion- 
ess; and the magnificent Swiveller himself, 
prince among the idle and impecunious, justi- 
fying by his snatches of song, and flowery 
rhetoric, his high position as ' perpetual grand- 
master ' among the ' Glorious Apollers,' — all 
these, making allowance perhaps for some 
idealization, were personages of Dickens' own 



180 LIFE OF 

time. But in Barnaby Rudge, Dickens threw 
himself back into the last century. The book 
is a historical novel, one of the two which he 
wrote, the other being the Tale of Two Cities, 
and its scenes are many of them laid among the 
No Popery Riots of 1780. 

A ghastly time, a time of aimless, brutal 
incendiarism and mad turbulence on the part 
of the mob ; a time of weakness and ineptitude 
on the part of the government; a time of 
wickedness, folly, and misrule! Dickens de- 
scribes it admirably. His picture of the riots 
themselves seems painted in pigments of blood 
and fire; and yet, through all the hurry and 
confusion, he retains the clearness of arrange- 
ment and lucidity which characterize the pic- 
tures of such subjects when executed by the 
great masters of the art — as Carlyle, for ex- 
ample. His portrait of the poor, crazy- 
brained creature. Lord George Gordon, who 
sowed the wind which the country was to reap 
in whirlwind, is excellent. Nor is what may 
be called the private part of the story unskil- 
fully woven with the historical part. The plot, 
though not good, rises perhaps above the aver- 
age of Dickens's plots ; for even we, his admir- 
ers, are scarcely bound to maintain that plot 



CHARLES DICKENS 131 

was his strong point. Beyond this, I think I 
may say that the book is, on the whole, the least 
characteristic of his books. It is the one which 
those who are most out of sympathy with his 
peculiar vein of humour and pathos will prob- 
ably think the best, and the one which the true 
Dickens lovers will generally regard as bear- 
ing the greatest resemblance to an ordinary 
novel. 



132 LIFE OF. 



CHAPTER VI 

^^^!^HE last number of Barnahy Budge 
£ J appeared in November, 1841, and, on 
^^^ the 4th of the following January, 
Dickens sailed with his wife for a six months' 
tour in the United States. What induced him 
to undertake this journey, more formidable 
then, of course, than now? 

Mainly, I think, that restless desire to see 
the world which is strong in a great many men, 
and was specially strong in Dickens. Ride as 
he might, and walk as he might, his abounding 
energies remained unsatisfied. In 1837 there 
had been trips to Belgium, Broadstairs, 
Brighton; in 1838 to Yorkshire, "Broadstairs, 
North Wales, and a fairly long stay at Twick- 
enham; in 1839 a similar stay at Petersham — 
where, as at Twickenham, frolic, gaiety and 
athletics had prevailed; — and trips to Broad- 
stairs and Devonshire; in 1840 trips again to 
Bath, Birmingham, Shakespeare's country, 
Broadstairs, Devonshire; in 1841 more trips, 
and a very notable visit to Edinburgh, with 



CHARLES DICKENS 133 

which Little Nell had a great deal to do. For 
Lord Jeffrey was enamoured of that young 
lady, declaring to whomsoever would hear that 
there had been ' nothing so good . . . since 
Cordelia ' ; and inoculating the citizens of the 
northern capital with his enthusiasm, he had in- 
duced them to offer to Dickens a right royal 
banquet, and the freedom of their city. Ac- 
cordingly to Edinburgh he repaired, and the 
dinner took place on the 26th of June, with 
three hundred of the chief notabilities for 
entertainers, and a reception such as kings 
might have envied. Jeffrey himself was ill 
and unable to take the chair, but Wilson, the 
leonine ' Christopher North,' editor of Black- 
wood, and author of those Nodes Ambrosianm 
which were read so eagerly as they came out, 
and which some of us find so difficult to read 
now — Wilson presided most worthily. Of 
speechifying there was of course much, and 
compliments abounded. But the banquet 
itself, the whole reception at Edinburgh were 
the most magnificent of compliments. Never, 
I imagine, can such efforts have been made to 
turn any young man's brain, as were made, 
during this and the following year, to turn the 
head of Dickens, who was still, be it remem- 



134 LIFE OF 

bered, under thirty. Nevertheless he came un- 
scathed through the ordeal. A kind of manly 
genuineness bore him through. Amid all the 
adulation and excitement, the public and pri- 
vate hospitalities, the semi-regal state appear- 
ance at the theatre, he could write, and write 
truly, to his friend Forster: ' The moral of 
this is, that there is no place like home; and I 
thank God most heartily for having given me 
a quiet spirit and a heart that won't hold many 
people. I sigh for Devonshire Terrace and 
Broadstairs, for battledore and shuttlecock; I 
want to dine in a blouse with you and Mac 
(Maclise). . . . On Sunday evening, the 
17th July, I shall revisit my household gods, 
please heaven. I wish the day were here.' 

Yes, except during the few years when he 
and his wife lived unhappily together, he was 
greatly attached to his home, with its friend- 
ships and simple pleasures; but yet, as I have 
said, a desire to see more of the world, and to 
garner new experiences, was strong upon him. 
The two conflicting influences often warred in 
his life, so that it almost seemed sometimes as 
if he were being driven by relentless furies. 
Those furies pointed now with stern fingers 
towards America, though ' how ' he was ' to get 



CHARLES DICKENS 135 

on ' ' for seven or eight months without * his 
friends, he could not upon his ' soul conceive ' ; 
though he dreaded ' to think of breaking up 
all ' his ' old happy habits for so long a time * ; 
though ' Kate,' remembering doubtless her 
four little children, wept whenever the subject 
was ' spoken of.' Something made him feel 
that the going was ' a matter of imperative 
necessity.' Washington Irving beckoned from 
across the Atlantic, speaking, as Jeffrey had 
spoken from Edinburgh, of Little Nell and 
her far-extended influence. There was a great 
reception foreshadowed, and a new world to 
be seen, and a book to be written about it. 
While as to the strongest of the home ties — 
the children that brought the tears into Mrs. 
Dickens's eyes, — the separation, after all, 
would not be eternal, and the good Macready, 
tragic actor and true friend, would take charge 
of the little folk while their parents were away. 
So Dickens, who had some time before * begun 
counting the days between this and coming 
home again,' set sail for America on the 4th of 
January, 1842. 

And a very rough experience he, and Mrs. 
Dickens, and Mrs. Dickens's maid seem to have 
had during that January passage from Liver- 



136 LIFE OF 

pool to Halifax and Boston. Most of the 
time it blew horribly, and they were direfully 
ill. Then a storm supervened, which swept 
away the paddle-boxes and stove in the life- 
boats, and they seem to have been in real peril. 
Next the ship struck on a mud-bank. But 
dangers and discomforts must have been for- 
gotten, at any rate to begin with, in the glories 
of the reception that awaited the ' inimitable,' 
— as Dickens whimsically called himself in 
those days, — when he landed in the New 
World. If he had been received with princely 
honours in Edinburgh, he was treated now as 
an emperor in some triumphal progress, Hali- 
fax sounded the first note of welcome, gave, as 
it were, the preliminary trumpet flourish. 
From that town he writes : ' I wish you could 
have seen the crowds cheering the inimitable 
in the streets. I wish you could have seen 
judges, law-officers, bishops, and law-makers 
welcoming the inimitable. I wish you could 
have seen the inimitable shown to a great elbow- 
chair by the Speaker's throne, and sitting alone 
in the middle of the floor of the House of 
Commons, the observed of all observers, listen- 
ing with exemplary gravity to the queerest 
speaking possible, and breaking, in spite of 



CHARLES DICKENS 137 

himself, into a smile as he thought of this com- 
mencement to the thousand and one stories in 
reserve for home.' At Boston the enthusiasm 
had swelled to even greater proportions. ' How 
can I give you,' he writes, ' the faintest notion 
of my reception here ; of the crowds that pour 
in and out the whole day; of the people that 
line the streets when I go out ; of the cheering 
when I went to the theatre; of the copies of 
verses, letters of congratulation, welcomes of 
all kinds, balls, dinners, assemblies without 
end? . , . There is to be a dinner in New 
York, ... to which I have had an invita- 
tion with every known name in America ap- 
pended to it. . . . I have had deputations 
from the Far West, who have come from more 
than two thousand miles' distance; from the 
lakes, the rivers, the backwoods, the log-houses, 
the cities, factories, villages and towns. Au- 
thorities from nearly all the states have written 
to me. I have heard from the universities, 
congress, senate, and bodies, public and pri- 
vate, of every sort and kind.' All was indeed 
going happy as a marriage bell. Did I not 
rightly say that the world was conspiring to 
spoil this young man of thirty, whose youth 
had certainly not been passed in the splendour 



138 LIFE OF 

of opulence or power? What wonder if in the 
dawn of his American experiences, and of such 
a reception, everything assumed a roseate hue? 
Is it matter for surprise if he found the 
women * very beautiful,' the ' general breeding 
neither stiff nor forward,' ' the good nature 
universal ' ; if he expatiated, not without a 
backward look at unprogressive Old England, 
on the comparative comfort among the work- 
ing classes, and the absence of beggars in the 
streets? But, alas, that rosy dawn ended, as 
rosy dawns sometimes will, in sleet and mist 
and very dirty weather. Before many weeks, 
before many days had flown, Dickens was 
writing in a very different spirit. On the 24th 
of February, in the midst of a perfect ovation 
of balls and dinners, he writes ' with reluctance, 
disappointment, and sorrow,' that ' there is no 
country on the face of the earth, where there 
is less freedom of opinion on any subject in 
reference to which there is a broad difference 
of opinion, than in ' the United States. On 
the 22d of March he writes again, to Mac- 
ready, who seems to have remonstrated with 
him on his growing discontent :' It is of no use, 
I am disappointed. This is not the republic 
I came to see; this is not the republic of my 



CHARLES DICKENS 139 

imagination. I infinitely prefer a liberal mon- 
archy—even with its sickening accompaniment 
of Court circulars— to such a government as 
this. The more I think of its youth and 
strength, the poorer and more trifling in a 
thousand aspects it appears in my eyes. In 
everything of which it has made a boast, ex- 
cepting its education of the people, and its 
care for poor children, it sinks immeasurably 
below the level I had placed it upon, and Eng- 
land, even England, bad and faulty as the old 
land is, and miserable as miUions of her people 
are, rises in the comparison. . . . Free- 
dom of opinion; where is it? I see a press more 
mean and paltry and silly and disgraceful than 
any country I ever knew. ... In the 
respects of not being left alone, and of being 
horribly disgusted by tobacco chewing and 
tobacco spittle, I have suffered considerably.' 
Extracts like these could be multiplied to 
any extent, and the question arises, why did 
such a change come over the spirit of Dickens? 
Washington Irving, at the great New York 
dinner, had called him ' the guest of the nation.' 
Why was the guest so quickly dissatisfied with 
his host, and quarrelling with the character of 
his entertainment? Sheer physical fatigue, I 



140 LIFE OF 

think, had a good deal to do with it. Even at 
Boston, before he had begun to travel over the 
unending railways, water-courses, and chaotic 
coach-roads of the great Republic, that key- 
note had been sounded. * We are already,' he 
had written, ' weary at times, past all expres- 
sion.' Few men can wander with impunity 
out of their own professional sphere, and un- 
dertake duties for which they have neither the 
training nor acquired tastes. Dickens was a 
writer, not a king; and here he was expected 
to hold a king's state, and live in a king's pub- 
licity, but without the formal etiquette that 
hedges a king from intruders, and makes his 
position tolerable. He was hemmed in by 
curious eyes, mobbed in the streets, stared at in 
his own private rooms, interviewed by the hour, 
shaken by the hand till his arm must often 
have been ready to drop off, waylaid at every 
turn with formal addresses. If he went to 
church the people crowded into the adjacent 
pews, and the preacher preached at him. If 
he got into a public conveyance, every one in- 
side insisted on an introduction, and the people 
outside — say before the train started — would 
pull down the windows and comment freely 
on his nose and eyes and personal appearance 



CHARLES DICKENS 141 

generally, some even touching him as if to see 
if he were real. He was safe from intrusion 
nowhere — no, not when he was washing and 
his wife in bed. Such attentions must have 
been exhausting to a degree that can scarcely 
be imagined. But there was more than mere 
physical weariness in his growing distaste for 
the United States. Perfectly outspoken at 
all times, and eager for the strife of tongues 
in any cause which he had at heart, it horrified 
him to find that he was expected not to express 
himself freely on such subjects as Inter- 
national Copyright, and that even in private, 
or semi-private intercourse, slavery was a topic 
to be avoided. Then I fear, too, that as he 
left cultured Boston behind, he was brought 
into close and habitual contact with natives 
whom he did not appreciate. Rightly or 
wrongly, he took a strong dislike for Brother 
Jonathan as Brother Jonathan existed, in the 
rough, five and forty years ago. He was 
angered by that young gentleman's brag, of- 
fended by the rough familiarity of his man- 
ners, indignant at his determination by all 
means to acquire dollars, incensed by his utter 
want of care for literature and art, sickened 
by his tobacco-chewing and expectorations. 



142 LIFE OF 

So when Dickens gets to ' Niagara Falls, upon 
the English side,' he puts ten dashes under the 
word English; and, meeting two English of- 
ficers, contrasts them in thought with the men 
whom he has just left, and seems, by note of 
exclamation and italics, to call upon the world 
to witness, ' what gentlemen^ what noblemen 
of nature they seemed ' ! 

And Brother Jonathan, how did he regard 
his young guest? Well, Jonathan, great as 
he was, and greater as he was destined to be, 
did not possess the gift of prophecy, and could 
not of course foresee the scathing satire of 
American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit. But 
still, amid all his enthusiasm, I think there must 
have been a feeling of uneasiness and disap- 
pointment. Part, as there is no doubt, of the 
fervour with which he greeted Dickens, was 
due to his regarding Dickens as the representa- 
tive of democratic feeling in aristocratic Eng- 
land, as the advocate of the poor and down- 
trodden against the wealthy and the strong; 
* and ' — thus argued Jonathan — ' because we 
are a democracy, therefore Dickens will ad- 
mire and love us, and see how immeasurably 
superior we are to the retrograde Britishers 
of his native land.' But unfortunately 



CHARLES DICKENS 143 

Dickens showed no signs of being impressed 
in that particular way. On the contrary, as 
we have seen, such comparison as he made in 
his own mind was infinitely to the disadvantage 
of the United States. ' We must be cracked 
up,' says Hannibal ChoUop, in Martin Chuz- 
zlewitj, speaking of his fellow countrymen. 
And Dickens, even while feted and honoured, 
would not ' crack up ' the Americans. He 
lectured them almost with truculence on their 
sins in the matter of copyright; he could 
scarcely be restrained from testifying against 
slavery; he was not the man to say he liked 
manners and customs which he loathed. Jona- 
than must have been very doubtfully satisfied 
with his guest. 

It is no part of my purpose to follow 
Dickens lingeringly, and step by step, from 
the day when he landed at Halifax, to the 7th 
of June, when he re-embarked at New York 
for England. From Boston he went to New 
York, where the great dinner was given with 
Washington Irving in the chair, and thence to 
Philadelphia and Washington, — which was 
still the empty ' city of magnificent distances,' 
that Mr. Goldwin Smith declares it has now 
ceased to be; — and thence again westward. 



144 LIFE OF 

and by Niagara and Canada back to New 
York. And if any persons want to know what 
he thought about these and other places, and 
the railway travelling, and the coach travel- 
ling, and the steamboat travelling, and the 
prisons and other public institutions — aye, and 
many other things besides, they cannot do bet- 
ter than read the American Notes for gen- 
eral circulation, which he wrote and published 
within the year after his return. Nor need 
such persons be deterred by the fact that Mac- 
aulay thought meanly of the book ; for Macau- 
lay, with all his great gifts, did not, as he 
himself knew full well, excel in purely literary 
criticism. 

So when he pronounces, that * what is 
meant to be easy and sprightly is vulgar and 
flippant,' and * what is meant to be fine is a 
great deal too fine for me, as the description 
of the Falls of Niagara,' one can venture to 
differ without too great a pang. The book, 
though not assuredly one of Dickens's best, 
contains admirable passages which none but 
he could have written, and the description of 
Niagara is noticeably fine, the sublimity of the 
subject being remembered, as a piece of im- 
passioned prose. Whether satire so bitter and 



CHARLES DICKENS 145 

unfriendly as that in which he indulged, both 
here and in Martin Chuzzlewit, was justifiable 
from what may be called an international point 
of view, is another question. Publicists do not 
always remember that a cut which would smart 
for a moment, and then be forgotten, if aimed 
at a countryman, rankles and festers if ad- 
ministered to a foreigner. And if this be true 
as regards the English publicist's conmient on 
the foreigner who does not understand our 
language, it is, of course, true with tenfold 
force as regards the foreigner whose language 
is our own. He understands only too well the 
jibe and the sneer, and the tone of superiority, 
more offensive perhaps than either. Looked 
at in this way, it can, I think, but be accounted 
a misfortune that the most popular of English 
writers penned two books containing so much 
calculated to wound American feeling, as the 
Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit. Nor are signs 
entirely wanting that, as the years went by, the 
mind of Dickens himself was haunted by some 
such suspicion. A quarter of a century later, 
he visited the United States a second time ; and 
speaking at a public dinner given in his honour 
by the journalists of New York, he took occa- 
sion to comment on the enormous strides which 



146 LIFE OF 

the country had made in the interval, and then 
said, ' Nor am I, beheve me, so arrogant as to 
suppose that in five and twenty years there 
have been no changes in me, and that I had 
nothing to learn, and no extreme impressions 
to correct when I was here first.' And he 
added that, in all future editions of the two 
books just named, he would cause to be re- 
corded, that, ' wherever he had been, in the 
smallest place equally with the largest, he had 
been received with unsurpassable politeness, 
delicacy, sweet temper, hospitality, considera- 
tion, and with unsurpassable respect for the 
privacy daily enforced upon him by the nature 
of his avocation there' (as a public reader), 
* and the state of his health.' 

And now, with three observations, I will 
conclude what I have to say about the visit to 
America in 1842. The first is that the Notes 
are entirely void of all vulgarity of reference 
to the private life of the notable Americans 
whom Dickens had met. He seems to have 
known, more or less intimately, the chief 
writers of the time — Washington Irving, 
Channing, Dana, Bryant, Longfellow, Ban- 
croft; but his intercourse with them he held 
sacred, and he made no literary capital out of 



CHARLES DICKENS 147 

it. Secondly, it is pleasant to note that there 
was, so far, no great ' incompatibility of tem- 
per ' between him and his wife. He speaks of 
her enthusiastically, in his correspondence, as 
a ' most admirable traveller,' and expatiates on 
the good temper and equanimity with which 
she had borne the fatigues and jars of a most 
trying journey. And the third point to which 
I will call attention is the thoroughly charac- 
teristic form of rest to which he had recourse 
in the midst of all his toil and travel. Most 
men would have sought relaxation in being 
quiet. He found it in vigorously getting up 
private theatricals with the officers of the Cold- 
stream Guards, at Montreal. Besides acting 
in all the three pieces played, he also accepted 
the part of stage manager; and ' I am not,' he 
says, ' placarded as stage manager for noth- 
ing. Everybody was told that they would have 
to submit to the most iron despotism, and 
didn't I come Macready over them? Oh no, 
by no means ; certainly not. The pains I have 
taken with them, and the perspiration I have 
expended, during the last ten days, exceed in 
amount anything you can imagine.' What 
bright vitality, and what a singular charm of 
exuberant animal spirits! 



148 LIFE OF 

And who was glad one evening — which 
would be about the last evening in June, or the 
first of July — when a hackney coach rattled 
up to the door of the house in Devonshire Ter- 
race, and four little folk, two girls and two 
boys, were hurried down, and kissed through 
the bars of the gate, because their father was 
too eager to wait till it was opened? Who 
were glad but the little folk aforementioned — 
I say nothing of the joy of father and mother; 
for children as they were, a sense of sorrow- 
ful loss had been theirs while their parents were 
away, and greater strictness seems to have 
reigned in the good JNIacready's household than 
in their own joyous home. It is Miss Dickens 
herself who tells us this, and in whose memory 
has lingered that pretty scene of the kiss 
through the bars in the summer gloaming. 
And she has much to tell us too of her father's 
tenderness and care, — of his sympathy with 
the children's terrors, so that, for instance, he 
would sit beside the cot of one of the little girls 
who had been startled, and hold her hand in his 
till she fell asleep; of his having them on his 
knees, and singing to them the merriest of 
comic songs; of his interest in all their small 
concerns ; of the many pet names with which he 



CHARLES DICKENS 149 

invested them/ Then, as they grew older, 
there were Twelfth Night parties and magic 
lanterns. ' Never such magic lanterns as those 
shown by him,' she says. ' Never such con- 
juring as his.' There was dancing, too, and 
the little ones taught him his steps, which he 
practised with much assiduity, once even 
jumping out of bed in terror, lest he had for- 
gotten the polka, and indulging in a solitary 
midnight rehearsal. Then, as the children 
grew older still, there were private theatricals. 
* He never,' she says again, ' was too busy to 
interest himself in his children's occupations, 
lessons, amusements, and general welfare.' 
Clearly not one of those brilliant men, a 
numerous race, who when away from their 
homes, in general society, sparkle and scintil- 
late, flash out their wit, and irradiate all with 
their humour, but who, when at home, are dull 
as rusted steel. Among the many tributes to 
his greatness, that of his own child has a place 
at once touching and beautiful. 

^ Miss Dickens evidently bears proudly still her pet 
name of ' Mamie,' and signs it to her book. 



150 LIFE OF 



CHAPTER VII 

^W^ITH the return from America began 

1 I # *^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ work and hard 
^^^ play. There was much industrious 
writing of American Notes, at Broadstairs 
and elsewhere; and there were many dinners 
of welcome home, and strolls, doubtless, with 
Forster and Maclise, and other intimates, to 
old haunts, as Jack Straw's Castle on Hamp- 
stead Heath, and similar houses of public en- 
tertainment. And then in the autumn there 
was ' such a trip . . . into Cornwall,' 
with Forster, and the painters Stanfield and 
Maclise for travelling companions. How they 
enjoyed themselves, and with what bubbling, 
bursting merriment ! ' I never laughed in my 
life as I did on this journey,' writes Dickens, 
* ... I was choking and gasping. . . 
all the way. And Stanfield got into such 
apoplectic entanglements that we were often 
obliged to beat him on the back with portman- 
teaus before we could recover him.' Imme- 
diately on their return, refreshed and invigo- 



CHARLES DICKENS 151 

rated by this wholesome hilarity and enjoy- 
ment, he threw himself into the composition of 
his next book, and the first number of Martin 
Chuzdewit appeared in January, 1843. 

Martin Chuzzlewit is unquestionably one of 
Dickens's great works. He himself held it to 
be ' in a hundred points ' and ' immeasurably ' 
superior to anything he had before written, 
and that verdict may, I think, on the whole, be 
accepted. The plot, as plot is usually under- 
stood, can scarcely indeed be commended. But 
then plot was never his strong point. Later 
in hfe, and acting, as I have always surmised, 
under the influence of his friend, Mr. Wilkie 
CoUins, he endeavoured to construct ingen- 
ious stories that turned on mysterious dis- 
appearances, and the substitution of one per- 
son for another, and murders real or suspected. 
All this was, to my mind, a mistake. Dickens 
had no real gift for the manufacture of these 
ingenious pieces of mechanism. He did not 
even many times succeed in disposing the 
events and marshalling the characters in his 
narratives so as to work, by seemingly un- 
forced and natural means, to a final situation 
and climax. Too oftei?, in order to hold his 
story together and make it move forward at 



152 LIFE OF 

all, he was compelled to make his personages 
pursue a line of conduct preposterous and im- 
probable, and even antagonistic to their nature. 
Take this very book. Old Martin Chuzzlewit 
is a man who has been accustomed, all through 
a long life, to have his own way, and to take it 
with a high hand. Yet he so far sets aside, 
during a course of months, every habit of his 
life, as to simulate the weakest subservience 
to Pecksniff — and that not for the purpose of 
unmasking Pecksniff, who wanted no unmask- 
ing, but only in order to disappoint him. Is 
it believable that old Martin should have 
thought Pecksniff worth so much trouble, per- 
sonal inconvenience, and humiliation? Or take 
again Mr. Boffin in Our Mutual Friend. Mr. 
Boffin is a simple, guileless, open-hearted, 
open-handed old man. Yet, in order to prove 
to Miss Bella Wilfer that it is not well to be 
mercenary, he, again, goes through a long 
course of dissimulation, and does some ad- 
mirable comic business in the character of a 
miser. I say it boldly, I do not believe Mr. 
Boffin possessed that amount of histrionic 
talent. Plots requiring to be worked out by 
such means are ill-constructed plots; or, to put 
it in another way, a man who had any gift for 



CHARLES DICKENS 153 

the construction of plots would never have had 
recourse to such means. Nor would he, I think, 
have adopted, as Dickens did habitually and 
for all his stories, a mode of publication so de- 
structive of unity of eif ect, as the publication 
in monthly or weekly parts. How could the 
reader see as a whole that which was presented 
to him at intervals of time more or less distant? 
How, and this is of infinitely greater import- 
ance, how could the writer produce it as a 
whole? For Dickens, it must be remembered, 
never finished a book before the commence- 
ment of publication. At first he scarcely did 
more than complete each monthly instalment 
as required; and though afterwards he was 
generally some little way in advance, yet 
always he wrote by parts, having the interest 
of each separate part in his mind, as well as the 
general interest of the whole novel. Thus, 
however desirable in the development of the 
story, he dared not risk a comparatively tame 
and uneventful number. Moreover, any por- 
tion once issued was unalterable and irrevoca- 
ble. If, as sometimes happened, any modifi- 
cation seemed desirable as the book progressed, 
there was no possibility of changing anything 
in the chapters already in the hands of the pub- 



154 LIFE OF 

lie, and so making them harmonize better with 
the new. 

But of course, with all this, the question 
still remains how far Dickens's comparative 
failure as a constructor of plots really de- 
tracts from his fame and standing as a novel- 
ist. To my mind, I confess, not very much. 
Plot I regard as the least essential element in 
the novelist's art. A novel can take the very 
highest rank without it. There is not any plot 
to speak of in Lesage's Gil Bias, and just as 
little in Thackeray's Vanity Fair, and only a 
very bad one in Goldsmith's Vicar of Wake- 
field. Coleridge admired the plot of Tom 
Jones, but though one naturally hesitates to 
differ from a critic of such superb mastery 
and power, I confess I have never been struck 
by that plot, any more than by the plots, such 
as they are, in Joseph Andrews, or in Smol- 
lett's works. Nor, if I can judge of other peo- 
ple's memories by my own, is it by the mecha- 
nism of the story, or by the intrigue, however 
admirably woven and unravelled, that one re- 
members a work of fiction. These may exer- 
cise an intense passing interest of curiosity, 
especially during a first perusal. But after- 
wards they fade from the mind, while the 



CHARLES DICKENS 155 

characters, if highly vitalized and strong, will 
stand out in our thoughts, fresh and full 
coloured, for an indefinite time. Scott's Cruy 
Mannering is a well-constructed story. The 
plot is deftly laid, the events are prepared for 
with a cunning hand; the coincidences are so 
arranged as to be made to look as probable as 
may be. Yet we remember and love the book, 
not for such excellences as these, but for Dan- 
die Dinmont, the Border farmer, and Pleydell, 
the Edinburgh advocate, and Meg Merrilies, 
the gypsy. The book's life is in its flesh and 
blood, not in its plot. And the same is true of 
Dickens's novels. He crowds them so full of 
human creatures, each with its own individu- 
ality and character, that we have no care for 
more than just as much story as may serve to 
show them struggling, joying, sorrowing, lov- 
ing. If the incidents will do this for us we 
are satisfied. It is not necessary that those in- 
cidents should be made to go through cunning 
evolutions to a definite end. Each is admirable 
in itself, and admirably adapted to its imme- 
diate purpose. That should more than suffice. 
And Dickens sometimes succeeds in reach- 
ing a higher unity than that of mere plot. He 
takes one central idea, and makes of it the soul 



156 LIFE OF 

of his novel, animating and vivifying every 
part. That central idea in Martin Cliuzzlewit 
is the influence of selfishness. The Chuzzle- 
wits are a selfish race. Old Martin is selfish; 
and so, with many good qualities and possi- 
bilities of better things, is his grandson, young 
Martin. The other branch of the family, An- 
thony Chuzzlewit and his son Jonas, are much 
worse. The latter especially is a horrible 
creature. Brought up to think of nothing ex- 
cept his own interests and the main chance, he 
is only saved by an accident from the crime of 
parricide, and afterwards commits a murder 
and poisons himself. As his career is one of 
terrible descent, so young Martin's is one of 
gradual regeneration from his besetting weak- 
ness. He falls in love with his cousin Mary — 
the only unselfish member of the family, by 
the by — and quarrels about this love affair 
with his grandfather, and so passes into the 
hard school of adversity. There he learns 
much. Specially valuable is the teaching which 
he gets as a settler in the swampy backwoods 
of the United States in company with Mark 
Tapley, j oiliest and most helpful of men. On 
his return, he finds his grandfather seemingly 
under the influence of Pecksniff, the hypocrite, 



CHARLES DICKENS 157 

the English TartuiFe. But that, as I have 
already mentioned, is only a ruse. Old Mar- 
tin is deceiving Pecksniff, who in due time re- 
ceives the reward of his deeds, and all ends 
happily for those who deserve happiness. 
Such is something like a bare outline of the 
story, with the beauty eliminated. For what 
makes its interest, we must go further, to the 
household of Pecksniff with his two daughters, 
Charity and Mercy, and Tom Pinch, whose 
beautiful, unselfish character stands so in con- 
trast to that of the grasping self-seekers by 
whom he is surrounded ; we must study young 
Martin himself, whose character is admirably 
drawn, and without Dickens's usual tendency 
to caricature ; we must laugh in sympathy with 
Mark Tapley; we must follow them both 
through the American scenes, which, in- 
tensely amusing as they are, must have bitterly 
envenomed the wounds inflicted on the na- 
tional vanity by American Notes, and, accord- 
ing to Dickens's own expression, ' sent them 
all stark staring raving mad across the water ' ; 
we must frequent the boarding establishment 
for single gentlemen kept by lean Mrs. 
Todgers, and sit with Sarah Gamp and Betsy 
Prig as they hideously discuss their avocations, 



158 LIFE OF 

or quarrel over the shadowy Mrs. Harris; we 
must follow Jonas Chuzzlewit on his errand 
of murder, and note how even his felon nature 
is appalled by the blackness and horror of his 
guilt, and how the ghastly terror of it haunts 
and cows him. A great book, I say again, a 
very great book. 

Yet not at the time a successful book. Why 
Fortune, the fickle jade, should have taken it 
into her freakish head to frown, or half frown, 
upon Dickens at this particular juncture, who 
shall tell? He was wooing her with his very 
best work, and she turned from him. The sale 
of Pickwick and Nicholas Nickleby had been 
from forty to fifty thousand copies of each 
part; the sale of Master Humphrey's Clock 
had risen still higher ; the sale of even the most 
popular parts of Martin Chuzzlewit fell to 
twenty-three thousand. This was, as may 
be supposed, a grievous disappointment. 
Dickens's personal expenditure had not per- 
haps been lavish in view of what he thought he 
could calculate on earning; but it had been 
freely based on that calculation. Demands, 
too, were being made upon his purse by rela- 
tions, — probably by his father, and certainly 
by his brother Frederic, which were frequent. 



CHARLES DICKENS 159 

embarrassing, and made in a way which one 
may call worse than indelicate. Any perma- 
nent loss of popularity would have meant 
serious money entanglements. With his 
father's career in full view, such a prospect 
must have been anything but pleasant. He 
cast about what he should do, and determined 
to leave England for a space, live more eco- 
nomically on the Continent, and gather ma- 
terials in Italy or Switzerland for a new travel 
book. But before carrying out this project, 
he would woo Fortune once again, and in a 
different form. During the months of Octo- 
ber and November, 1843, in the intervals of 
Chuzzlewitj, he wrote a short story that has 
taken its place, by almost universal consent, 
among his masterpieces, nay, among the mas- 
terpieces of English literature : The Christmas 
Carol. 

All Dickens's great gifts seem reflected, 
sharp and distinct, in this little book, as in a 
convex mirror. His humour, his best pathos, 
which is not that of grandiloquence, but of 
simplicity, his bright poetic fancy, his kindli- 
ness, all here find a place. It is great painting 
in miniature, genius in its quintessence, a gem 
of perfect water. We may apply to it any 



160 LIFE OF 

simile that implies excellence in the smallest 
compass. None but a fine imagination would 
have conceived the supernatural agency that 
works old Scrooge's moral regeneration — the 
ghosts of Christmas past, present, and to come, 
that each in turn speaks to the weazened heart 
of the old miser, so that, almost unwittingly, 
he is softened by the tender memories of child- 
hood, warmed by sympathy for those who 
struggle and suffer, and appalled by the pros- 
pect of his own ultimate desolation and black 
solitude. Then the episodes: the scenes to 
which these ghostly visitants convey Scrooge; 
the story of his earlier years as shown in vis- 
ion; the household of the Cratchits, and poor 
little crippled Tiny Tim; the party given by 
Scrooge's nephew; nay, before all these, the 
terrible interview with Marley's Ghost. All 
are admirably executed. Sacrilege would it 
be to suggest the alteration of a word. First 
of the Christmas books in the order of time, 
it is also the best of its own kind; it is in its 
own order perfect. 

Nor did the public of Christmas, 1843, fail 
to appreciate that something of very excellent 
quality had been brought forth for their bene- 
fit, ' The first edition of six thousand copies,' 



CHARLES DICKENS 161 

says Forster, * was sold ' on the day of publi- 
cation, and about as many more would seem 
to have been disposed of before the end of 
February, 1844. But, alas, Dickens had set 
his heart on a profit of 1000/., whereas in Feb- 
ruary he did not see his way to much more than 
460Z./ and his unpaid bills for the previous 
year he described as ' terrific' So something, 
as I have said, had to be done. A change of 
front became imperative. Messrs. Bradbury 
and Evans advanced him 2800Z. ' for a fourth 
share in whatever he might write during the 
ensuing eight years,' — he purchased at the 
Pantechnicon ' a good old shabby devil of a 
coach,' also described as ' an English travelling 
carriage of considerable proportions ' ; en- 
gaged a courier who turned out to be the 
courier of couriers, a very conjurer among 
couriers; let his house in Devonshire Terrace; 
and so started off for Italy, as I calculate the 
dates, on the 1st of July, 1844. 

^ The profit at the end of 1844 was 7261. 



162 LIFE OF 



CHAPTER VIII 

V'^fTI, those eventful, picturesque, uncom- 
K I fortable old travelling days, when 
^' ^ railways were unborn, or in their in- 
fancy; those interminable old dusty drives, in 
diligence or private carriage, along miles and 
miles of roads running straight to the low 
horizon, through a line of tall poplars, across 
the plains of France! What an old-world 
memory it seems, and yet, as the years go, not 
so very long since after all. The party that 
rumbled from Boulogne to Marseilles in the 
old ' devil of a coach ' aforesaid, ' and another 
conveyance for luggage,' and I know not 
what other conveyances besides, consisted of 
Dickens himself; Mrs. Dickens; her sister, 
Miss Georgina Hogarth, who had come to live 
with them on their return from America; five 
children, for another boy had been born some 
six months before; Roche, the prince of 
couriers ; * Anne,' apparently the same maid 
who had accompanied them across the Atlan- 
tic; 9,nd other dependents: a somewhat for- 



CHARLES DICKENS 163 

midable troupe and cavalcade. Of their mode 
of travel, and what they saw on the way, or 
perhaps, more accurately, of what Dickens 
saw, with those specially keen eyes of his, at 
Lyons, Avignon, Marseilles, and other places 
— one may read the master's own account in 
the Pictures from Italy. Marseilles was 
reached on the 14th of July, and thence a 
steamer took them, coasting the fairy Mediter- 
ranean shores, to Genoa, their ultimate desti- 
nation, where they landed on the 16th. 

The Italy of 1844 was like, and yet unlike 
the Italy of to-day. It was the old disunited 
Italy of several small kingdoms and princi- 
palities, the Italy over which lowered the 
shadow of despotic Austria, and of the Pope's 
temporal power, not the Italy which the genius 
of Cavour has welded into a nation. It was 
a land whose interest came altogether from the 
past, and that lay as it were in the beauty of 
time's sunset. How unlike the United States ! 
The contrast has always, I confess, seemed to 
me a piquant one. It has often struck me with 
a feeling of quaintness that the two countries 
which Dickens specially visited and described, 
were, the one this lovely land of age and hoar 
antiquity, and the other that young giant land 



164 LIFE OF 

of the West, which is still in the garish strong 
light of morning, and whose great day is in 
the future. 'Nor, I think, before he had seen 
both, would Dickens himself have been able to 
tell on which side his sympathies would lie. 
Thoroughly popular in his convictions, thor- 
oughly satisfied that to-day was in all respects 
better than yesterday, it is clear that he ex- 
pected to find more pleasure in the brand new 
Republic than his actual experience warranted. 
The roughness of the strong, uncultured 
young life grated upon him. It jarred upon 
his sensibilities. But of Italy he wrote with 
very different feeling. What though the 
places were dirty, the people shiftless, idle, 
unpunctual, unbusinesslike, and the fleas as 
the sand which is upon the sea-shore for multi- 
tude? It mattered not while life was so pic- 
turesque and varied, and manners were so full 
of amenity. Your inn might be, and probably 
was, ill-appointed, untidy, the floors of brick, 
the doors agape, the windows banging — a con- 
trast in every way to the palatial hotel in New 
York or Washington. But then how cheerful 
and amusing were mine host and hostess, and 
how smilingly determined all concerned to 
make things pleasant. So the artist in Dickens 



CHARLES DICKENS 165 

turned from the new to the old, and Italy, as 
she is wont, cast upon him her spell. 

First impressions, however, were not alto- 
gether satisfactory. Dickens owns to a pang 
when he was ' set down ' at Albaro, a suburb 
of Genoa, * in a rank, dull, weedy courtyard, 
attached to a kind of pink jail, and told he 
lived there.' But he immediately adds : * I 
little thought that day that I should ever come 
to have an attachment for the very stones in 
the streets of Genoa, and to look back upon 
the city with affection, as connected with many 
hours of happiness and quiet.' In sooth, he 
enjoyed the place thoroughly. Martin Chuz- 
zlewit had left his hands. He was fairly en- 
titled for a few weeks to the luxury of idle- 
ness, and he threw himself into doing nothing, 
as he was accustomed to throw himself into his 
work, with all energy. And there was much to 
do, much especially to see. So Dickens bathed 
and walked; and strolled about the city hither 
and thither, and about the suburbs and about 
the surrounding country; and visited public 
buildings and private palaces; and noted the 
ways of the inhabitants ; and saw Genoese life 
in its varied formis; and wrote light glancing 
letters about it all to friends at home; and 



166 LIFE OF 

learnt Italian; and, in the end of September, 
left his * pink jail,' which had been taken for 
him at a disproportionate rent, and moved into 
the Palazzo Peschiere, in Genoa itself : a won- 
derful palace, with an entranoe-hall fifty feet 
high, and larger than ' the dining-room of the 
Academy,' and bedrooms ' in size and shape 
like those at Windsor Castle, but greatly 
higher,' and a view from the windows over 
gardens where the many fountains sparkled, 
and the gold fish glinted, and into Genoa itself, 
with its ' many churches, monasteries, and con- 
vents pointing to the sunny sky,' and into the 
harbour, and over the sapphire sea, and up 
again to the encircling hills — a view, as 
Dickens declared, that ' no custom could im- 
pair, and no description enhance.' 

But with the beginning of October came 
again the time for work ; and beautiful beyond 
all beauty as were his surroundings, the child 
of London turned to the home of his heart, 
and pined for the London streets. For some 
little space he seemed to be thinking in vain, 
and cudgelling his brains for naught, when 
suddenly the chimes of Genoa's many churches, 
that seemed to have been clashing and clang- 
ing nothing but distraction and madness, rang 



CHARLES DICKENS 167 

harmony into his mind. The subject and title 
of his new Christmas book were found. He 
threw himself into the composition of The 
Chimes. 

Earnest at all times in what he wrote, living 
ever in intense and passionate sympathy with 
the world of his imagination, he seems specially 
to have put his whole heart into this book. ' All 
my affections and passions got twined and 
knotted up in it, and I became as haggard as 
a murderer long before I wrote " the end," ' — 
so he told Lady Blessington on the 20th of 
November; and to Forster he expressed the 
yearning that was in him to ' leave ' his ' hand 
upon the time, lastingly upon the time, with 
one tender touch for the mass of toiling peo- 
ple that nothing could obliterate.' This was 
the keynote of The Chimes. He intended in 
it to strike a great and memorable blow on be- 
half of the poor and down-trodden. His pur- 
pose, so far as I can make it out, was to show 
how much excuse there is for their shortcom- 
ings, and how in their errors, nay even in their 
crimes, there linger traces of goodness and 
kin-dly feeling. On this I shall have some- 
thing to say when discussing Hard Times, 
which is somewhat akin to The Chimes in 



168 LIFE OF 

scope and purpose. Meanwhile it cannot 
honestly be affirmed that the story justifies the 
passion that Dickens threw into its composi- 
tion. The supernatural machinery is weak as 
compared with that of the Carol. Little 
Trotty Veck, dreaming to the sound of the 
bells in the old church tower, is a bad sub- 
stitute for Scrooge on his midnight rambles. 
Nor are his dreams at all equal, for humour 
or pathos, to Scrooge's visions and exper- 
iences. And the moral itself is not clearly 
brought out. I confess to being a little doubt- 
ful as to what it exactly is, and how it follows 
from the premises furnished. I wish, too, that 
it had been carried home to some one with more 
power than little Trotty to give it effect. 
What was the good of convincing that kindly 
old soul that the people of his own class had 
warm hearts? He knew it very well. Take 
from the book the fine imaginative description 
of the goblin music that leaps into life with the 
ringing of the bells, and there remain the most 
excellent intentions — and not much more. 

Such, however, was very far from being 
Dickens's view. He had ' undergone,' he said, 

* as much sorrow and agitation ' in the writing 

* as if the thing were real,' and on the 3d of 



CHARLES DICKENS 169 

November, when the last page was written, had 
indulged ' in M^hat women call a good cry ' ; 
and, as usually happens, the child that had cost 
much sorrow was a child of special love/ So, 
when all was over, nothing would do but he 
must come to London to read his book to the 
choice literary spirits whom he specially loved. 
Accordingly he started from Genoa on the 6th 
of November, travelled by Parma, Modena, 
Bologna, Ferrara, Venice — where, such was 
the enchantment of the place, that he felt it 
* cruel not to have brought Kate and Georgy, 
positively cruel and base ' ; — and thence again 
by Verona, Mantua, JMilan, the Simplon Pass, 
Strasbourg, Paris, and Calais, to Dover, and 
wintry England. Sharp work, considering all 
he had seen by the way, and how effectually he 
had seen it, for he was in London on the even- 
ing of the 30th of November, and, on the 2d 
of December, reading his little book to the 
choice spirits aforesaid, all assembled for the 
purpose at Forster's house. There they are: 
they live for us still in Maclise's drawing, 
though Time has plied his scythe among them 
so effectually, during the forty-tv/o years 
since flown, that each has passed into the silent 

1 He read The Chimes at his first reading as a paid 
reader. 



170 LIFE OF 

land. There they sit : Carlyle, not the shaggy 
Scotch terrier with the melancholy eyes that 
we were wont to see in his latter days, but close 
shaven and alert; and swift-witted Douglas 
Jerrold; and Laman Blanchard, whose name 
goes darkling in the literature of the last gen- 
eration; and Forster himself, journalist and 
author of many books ; and the painters Dyce, 
Maclise, and Stanfield; and Byron's friend 
and school companion, the clergyman Harness, 
who; like Dyce, pays to the story the tribute of 
his tears. 

Dickens can have been in London but the 
fewest of few days, for on the 13th of De- 
cember he was leaving Paris for Genoa, and 
that after going to the theatre more than once. 
From Genoa he started again, on the. 20th of 
January, 1845, with Mrs. Dickens, to see the 
Carnival at Rome. Thence he went to Naples, 
returning to Rome for the Holy Week; and 
thence again by Florence to Genoa. He 
finally left Italy in the beginning of June, and 
was back with his family in Devonshire Ter- 
race at the end of that month. 

To what use of a literary kind should he 
turn his Italian observations and experiences? 
In what form should he publish the notes made 



CHARLES DICKENS 171 

by the way? Events soon answered that ques- 
tion. The year 1845 stands in the history of 
Queen Victoria's reign as a time of intense 
poHtical excitement. The Corn Law agitation 
raged somewhat furiously. Dickens felt 
strongly impelled to throw himself into the 
strife. Why should he not influence his fel- 
low-men, and ' battle for the true, the just,' 
as the able editor of a daily newspaper? Ac- 
cordingly, after all the negotiations which 
enterprises of this kind necessitate, he made 
the due arrangements for starting a new pa- 
per. The Daily News. It was to be edited by 
himself, to ' be kept free,' the prospectus said, 
* from personal influence or party bias,' and to 
be ' devoted to the advocacy of all rational and 
honest means by which wrong may be re- 
dressed, just rights maintained, and the happi- 
ness and welfare of society promoted.' His 
salary, so I have seen it stated, was to be 
2000/. a year; and the first number came out 
on the morning of the 21st of January, 1846. 
He held the post of editor three M^eeks. 

The world may, I think, on the whole, be 
congratulated that he did not hold it longer. 
Able editors are more easily found than such 
writers as Dickens. There were higher claims 



172 LIFE OF 

upon his time. But to return to the Italian 
notes: it was in the columns of The Daily 
News that they first saw the light. They were 
among the baby attractions and charms, if I 
may so speak, of the nascent paper, which is 
now, as I need not remind my readers, enjoy- 
ing a hale and vigorous manhood. And ad- 
mirable sketches they are. Much, very much 
has been written about Italy. The subject has 
been done to death by every variety of pen, 
and in every civilized tongue. But amid all 
this writing, T)ickens*s Pictures from Italy 
still holds a high and distinctive position. That 
the descriptions, whether of places and works 
of art, or of life's pageantry, and what may be 
called the social picturesque, should be graphic, 
vivid, animated, was almost a matter of course. 
But a priori, I think one might have feared 
lest he should * chaff ' the place and its inhabi- 
tants overmuch, and yield to the temptation of 
making merriment over matters which hoar 
age and old associations had hallowed. We 
can all imagine the kind of observation that 
would occur to Sam Weller in strolling 
through St. Mark's at Venice, or the Vatican ; 
and, guessing beforehand, guessing before the 
Pictures were produced, one might, I repeat, 



CHARLES DICKENS 173 

have been afraid lest Dickens should go 
through Italy as a kind of educated Sam 
Weller. Such prophecies would have been 
falsified by the event. The book as a whole is 
very free from banter or persiflage. Once and 
again the comic side of some situation strikes 
him, of course. Thus, after the ceremony of 
the Pope washing the feet of thirteen poor 
men, in memory of our Lord washing the feet 
of the Apostles, Dickens says : ' The whole 
thirteen sat down to dinner; grace said by the 
Pope; Peter in the chair.' But these humour- 
ous touches are rare, and not in bad taste; 
while for the historic and artistic grandeurs of 
Italy he shows an enthusiasm which is individ- 
ual and discriminating. We feel, in what he 
says about painting, that we are getting the 
fresh impressions of a man not specially 
trained in the study of the old masters, but 
who yet succeeds, by sheer intuitive sympathy, 
in appreciating much of their greatness. His 
criticism of the paintings at Venice, for in- 
stance, is very decidedly superior to that of 
Macaulay. In brief the Pictures, to give to 
the book the name which Dickens gave it, are 
painted with a brush at once kindly and bril- 
liant. 



174 LIFE OE 



CHAPTER IX 

^^^!^HE publication of the Pictures, though 
B J I have dealt with it as a sort of com- 
^^^ plement to Dickens's sojourn in Italy, 
carries us to the year 1846. But before going 
on with the history of that year, there are one 
or two points to be taken up in the history of 
1845. The first is the performance, on the 
21st of September, of Ben Jonson's play of 
Every Man in his Humour , by a select com- 
pany of amateur actors, among whom Dickens 
held chief place. ' He was the life and soul 
of the entire affair,' says Forster. ' I never 
seem till then to have known his business capa- 
bilities. He took everything on himself and 
did the whole of it without an effort. He was 
stage director, very often stage carpenter, 
scene arranger, property man, prompter, and 
band-master. Without offending any one, he 
kept every one in order. For all he had useful 
suggestions. . . . He adjusted scenes, 
assisted carpenters, invented costumes, de- 
vised playbills, wrote out calls, and enforced. 



CHARLES DICKENS 175 

as well as exhibited in his own proper person, 
everything of which he urged the necessity on 
others.' Dickens had once thought of the 
stage as a profession, and was, according to all 
accounts, an amateur actor of very unusual 
power. But of course he only acted for his 
amusement, and I don't know that I should 
have dwelt upon this performance, which was 
followed by others of a similar kind, if it did 
not, in Forster's description, afford such a 
signal instance of his efficiency as a practical 
man. The second event to be mentioned as 
happening in 1845, is the publication of an- 
other very pretty Christmas story, Tlie Cricket 
on the Hearth. 

Though Dickens had ceased to edit The 
Daily News on the 9th of February, 1846, he 
contributed to the paper for some few weeks 
longer. But by the month of May his connec- 
tion with it had entirely ceased; and on the 31st 
of that month, he started, by Belgium and the 
Rhine, for Lausanne in Switzerland, where 
he had determined to spend some time, and 
commence his next great book, and write his 
next Christmas story. 

A beautiful place is Lausanne, as many of 
my readers will know; and a beautiful house 



176 LIFE OF 

the house called Rosemont, situated on a hill 
that rises from the Lake of Geneva, with the 
lake's blue waters stretching below, and across, 
on the other side, a magnificent panorama of 
snowy mountains, the Simplon, St. Gothard, 
Mont Blanc, towering to the sky. This de- 
lightful place Dickens took at a rent of some 
lOZ. a month. Then he re-arranged all the fur- 
niture, as was his energetic wont. Then he 
spent a fortnight or so in looking about him, 
and writing a good deal for Lord John Rus- 
sell on Ragged Schools, and for Miss Coutts 
about her various charities; and finally, on the 
28th of June, as he announced to Forster in 
capital letters, Began Dombey. 

But as the Swiss pine with home-sickness 
when away from their own dear land, so did 
this Londoner, amid all the glories of the Alps, 
pine for the London streets. It seemed 
almost as if they were essential to the exercise 
of his genius. The same strange mental phe- 
nomenon which he had observed in himself at 
Genoa was reproduced here. Everything else 
in his surroundings smiled most congenially. 
The place was fair beyond speech. The shift- 
ing, changing beauty of the mountains en- 
tranced him. The walks offered an endless 



CHARLES DICKENS 177 

variety of enjoyment. He liked the peoj)le. 
He liked the English colony. He had made 
several dear friends among them and among 
the natives. He was interested in the poli- 
ties of the country, which happened, just 
then, to he in a state of peculiar excitement 
and revolution. Everything was charming; 
— ' but,' he writes, ' the toil and labour of 
writing, day after day, without that magic- 
lantern (of the London streets) is immense! ' 
It literally knocked him up. He had ' bad 
nights,' was 'sick and giddy,' desponding 
over his book, more than half inclined to 
abandon the Christmas story altogether for 
that year. However, a short trip to Geneva, 
and the dissipation of a stroll or so in its 
thoroughfares, to remind him, as it were, of 
what streets were like, and a week of ' idle- 
ness ' ' rusting and devouring,' ' complete and 
unbroken,' set him comparatively on his legs 
again, and before he left Lausanne for Paris 
on the 16th of November, he had finished three 
parts of Domhey, and the Battle of Life. 

Of the latter I don't know that I need say 
anything. It is decidedly the weakest of his 
Christmas books. But Domhey is very differ- 
ent work, and the first five numbers especially. 



178 LIFE OF 

which carry the story to the death of little 
Paul, contain passages of humour and pathos, 
and of humour and pathos mingled together 
and shot in warp and woof, like some daint- 
iest silken fabric, that are scarcely to be 
matched in the language. As I go in my 
mind through the motherless child's short his- 
tory — his birth, his christening, the engage- 
ment of the wet-nurse, the time when he is 
consigned to the loveless care of Mrs. Pipchin, 
his education in Dr. Blimber's Academy under 
the classic Cornelia, and his death — as I follow 
it all in thought, now smiling at each well- 
remembered touch of humour, and now sad- 
dened and solemnized as the shadow of death 
deepens over the frail little life, I confess to 
something more than critical admiration for 
the writer as an artist. I feel towards him as 
towards one who has touched my heart. Of 
course it is the misfortune of the book, regard- 
ing it as a whole, that the chapters relating to 
Paul, which are only an episode, should be of 
such absorbing interest, and come so early. 
Dickens really wrote them too well. They 
dwarf the rest of the story. We find a diffi- 
culty in resuming the thread of it with the same 
zest when the child is gone. But though the 



CHARLES DICKENS 179 

remainder of the book inevitably suffers in this 
way, it ought not to suffer unduly. Even apart 
from little Paul the novel is a fine one. Pride 
is its subject, as selfishness is that of Martin 
Chuzzlewit. Mr. Dombey, the city merchant, 
has as much of the arrogance of caste and po- 
sition as any blue-blooded hidalgo. He is as 
proud of his name as if he had inherited it from 
a race of princes. That he neglects and 
slights his daughter, and loves his son, is 
mainly because the latter will add a sort of 
completeness to the firm, and make it truly 
Dombey and Son^ while the girl, for all com- 
mercial purposes, can be nothing but a cipher. 
And through his pride he is struck to the 
heart, and ruined. Mr. Carker, his confiden- 
tial agent and manager, trades upon it for all 
vile ends, first to feather his own nest, and then 
to launch his patron into large and unsound 
business ventures. The second wife, whom he 
marries, certainly with no affection on either 
side, but purely because of her birth and con- 
nections, and because her great beauty will add 
to his social prestige — she, with ungovernable 
pride equal to his own, revolts against his au- 
thority, and, in order to humiliate him the more, 
pretends to elope with Carker, whom in turn 



180 LIFE OF 

she scorns and crushes. Broken thus in for- 
tune and honour, Mr. Dombey yet falls not 
ignobly. His creditors he satisfies in full, re- 
serving to himself nothing ; and with a softened 
heart turns to the daughter he had slighted, 
and in her love finds comfort. Such is the 
main purport of the story, and round it, in 
graceful arabesques, are embroidered, after 
Dickens's manner, a whole world of subsidiary 
incidents thronged with all sorts of characters. 
What might not one say about Dr. Blimber's 
genteel academy at Brighton ; and the Toodles 
family, so humble in station and intellect and 
so large of heart; and the contrast between 
Carker the manager and his brother, who for 
some early dishonest act, long since repented 
of, remains always Carker the junior; and 
about Captain Cuttle, and that poor, muddled 
nautical philosopher. Captain Bunsby, and the 
Game Chicken, and Mrs. Pipchin, and Miss 
Tox; and Cousin Feenix with wilful legs so 
little under control, and yet to the core of him 
a gentleman; and the apoplectic Major Bag- 
stock, the Joey B. who claimed to be ' rough 
and tough and devilish sly ' ; and Susan Nip- 
per, as swift of tongue as a rapier, and as 
sharp? Reader, don't you know all these 



CHARLES DICKENS 181 

people? For myself, I have jostled against 
them constantly any time the last twenty years. 
They are as much part of my hfe as the people 
I meet every day. 

But there is one person whom I have left out 
of my enumeration, not certainly because I 
don't know him, for I know him very well, but 
because I want to speak about him more par- 
ticularly. That person is my old friend Mr. 
Toots; and the special point in his character 
which induces me to linger is the slight touch 
of craziness that sits so charmingly upon him. 
M. Taine, the French critic, in his chapters 
on Dickens, repeats the old remark that genius 
and madness are near akin.^ He observes, 
and observes truly, that Dickens describes so 
well because an imagination of singular inten- 
sity enables him to see the object presented, and 
at the same time to impart to it a kind of vis- 
ionary life. ' That imagination,' says M. 
Taine, ' is akin to the imagination of the mono- 
maniac' And, starting from this point, he 
proceeds to show, here again quite truly, with 
what admirable sympathetic power and insight 
Dickens has described certain cases of madness, 
as in Mr. Dick. But here, having said some 
right things, M. Taine goes all wrong. Ac- 

^ History of English Literature, vol. v. 



182 LIFE OF 

cording to him, these portraits of persons who 
have lost their wits, ' however amusing they 
may seem at first sight,' are ' horrible.' They 
could only have been painted by ' an imagina- 
tion such as that of Dickens, excessive, disor- 
dered, and capable of hallucination.' He 
seems to be not far from thinking that only 
our splenetic and melancholy race could have 
given birth to such literary monsters. To 
speak like this, as I conceive, shows a singular 
misconception of the instinct or set purpose 
that led Dickens to introduce these characters 
into his novels at all. It is perfectly true that 
he has done so several times. Barnaby Rudge, 
the hero of the book of the same name, is half- 
witted. Mr. Dick, in David Copperfield, is 
decidedly crazy. Mr. Toots is at least simple. 
Little Miss Flite, in Bleak House, haunting 
the Law Courts in expectation of a judgment 
on the Day of Judgment, is certainly not 
compos mentis. And one may concede to M. 
Taine that some element of sadness must 
always be present when we see a human 
creature imperfectly gifted with man's noblest 
attribute of reason. But, granting this to the 
full, is it possible to conceive of anything more 
kindly and gentle in the delineation of partial 



CHARLES DICKENS 183 

insanity than the portraits which the French 
critic finds horrible? Barnaby Rudge's luna- 
tic symptoms are compatible with the keenest 
enjoyment of nature's sights and sounds, fresh 
air and free sunlight and compatible with loy- 
alty and high courage. Many men might profit- 
ably change their reason for his unreason. Mr. 
Dick's flightiness is allied to an intense devo- 
tion and gratitude to the woman who had res- 
cued him from confinement in an asylum ; there 
lives a world of kindly sentiments in his poor 
bewildered brains. Of Mr. Toots, Susan Nip- 
per says truly, ' he may not be a Solomon, nor 
do I say he is, but this I do say, a less selfish 
human creature human nature never knew.' 
And to this one may add that he is entirely 
high-minded, generous, and honourable. Miss 
Elite's crazes do not prevent her from being 
full of all womanly sympathies. Here I think 
lies the charm these characters had for Dick- 
ens. As he was fond of showing a soul of 
goodness in the ill-favoured and uncouth, so 
he liked to make men feel that even in a dis- 
ordered intellect all kindly virtues might find a 
home, and a happy one. M. Taine may call 
this ' horrible ' if he likes. I think myself it 
would be possible to find a better adjective. 



184 LIFE OF 

Dickens was at work on Domhey and Son 
during the latter part of the year 1846, and the 
whole of 1847, and the early part of 1848. We 
left him on the 16th of November, in the first 
of these years, starting from Lausanne for 
Paris, which he reached on the evening of the 
20th. Here he took a house — a ' preposterous ' 
house, according to his own account, with only 
gleams of reason in it; and visited many thea- 
tres; and went very often to the Morgue, 
where lie the unowned dead; and had pleasant 
friendly intercourse with the notable French 
authors of the time, Alexandre Dumas the 
Great, most prolific of romance writers; and 
Scribe of the innumerable plays ; and the poets 
Lamartine and Victor Hugo; and Chateau- 
briand, then in his sad and somewhat morose 
old age. And in Paris too, with the help of 
streets and crowded ways, he wrote the great 
number of Domhey, the number in which little 
Paul dies. Three months did Dickens spend 
in the French capital, the incomparable city, 
and then was back in London, at the old life 
of hard work; but with even a stronger infu- 
sion than before of private theatricals — private 
theatricals on a grandiose scale, that were ap- 
plauded by the Queen herself, and took him 



CHARLES DICKENS 185 

and his troupe starring about during the next 
three or four years, hither and thither, and here 
and there, in London and the provinces. 
* Splendid strolHng,' Forster calls it; and a 
period of unmixed jollity and enjoyment it 
seems to have been. Of course Dickens was 
the life and soul of it all. Mrs. Cowden Clarke, 
one of the few survivors, looking back to that 
happy time, says enthusiastically, ' Charles 
Dickens, beaming in look, alert in manner, 
radiant with good humour, genial-voiced, gay, 
the very soul of enjoyment, fun, good taste, 
and good spirits, admirable in organizing de- 
tails and suggesting novelty of entertainment, 
was of all beings the very man for a holiday 
season.' ^ The proceeds of the performances 
were devoted to various objects, but chiefly to 
an impossible ' Guild of Literature and Art,' 
which, in the sanguine confidence of its pro- 
jectors, and especially of Dickens, was to in- 
augurate a golden age for the author and 
the artist. But of all this, and of Dickens's 
speeches at the Leeds Mechanics' Institute, 
and Glasgow AthenaBum, in the December of 
1847, I don't know that I need say very much. 

2 Recollections of Writers, by Charles and Mary 
Cowden Clarke. 



186 LIFE OF 

The interest of a great writer's life is, after all, 
mainly in what he writes ; and when I have said 
that Domhey proved to be a pecuniary success, 
the first six numbers realizing as much as 
2820/., I think I may fairly pass on to Dick- 
ens's next book, the Haunted Man. 

This was his Christmas story for 1848; the 
last, and not the worst of his Christmas stories. 
Both conception and treatment are thoroughly 
characteristic. Mr. Redlaw, a chemist, brood- 
ing over an ancient wrong, comes to the con- 
clusion that it would be better for himself, bet- 
ter for all, if, in each of us, every memory of 
the past could be cancelled. A ghostly vis- 
itant, born of his own resentment and gloom, 
gives him the boon he seeks, and enables him to 
go about the world freezing all recollection in 
those he meets. And lo, the boon turns out 
to be a curse. His presence blights those 
on whom it falls. For with the memory of 
past wrongs, goes the memory of past benefits, 
of all the mutual kindlinesses of life, and each 
unit of humanity becomes self-centred and 
selfish. Two beings alone resist his influence 
— one, a creature too selfishly nurtured for any 
of mankind's better recollections ; and the other 
a woman so good as to resist the spell, and even. 



CHARLES DICKENS 187 

finally, to exorcise it in Mr. Redlaw's own 
breast. 

David Copyerfield was published between 
May, 1849, and the autumn of 1850, and 
marks, I think, the culminating point in Dick- 
ens's career as a writer. So far there had been, 
not perhaps from book to book, but on the 
whole, decided progress, the gradual attain- 
ment of greater ease, and of the power of ob- 
taining results as strong, and better, by simpler 
means. Beyond this there was, if not absolute 
declension, for he never wrote anything that 
could properly be called careless or unworthy 
of himself, yet at least no advance. Of the 
interest that attaches to the book from the fact 
that so many portions are autobiographical, I 
have already spoken; nor need I go over the 
adventitious attractions, the novel is an admir- 
able one. All the scenes of little David's 
childhood in the Norfolk home — the Blunder- 
stone rookery, where there were no rooks — are 
among the most beautiful pictures of child- 
hood in existence. In what sunshine of love 
does the lad bask with his mother and Peg- 
gotty, till Mrs. Copperfield contracts her dis- 
astrous second marriage with Mr. Murdstone! 
Then how the scene changes. There come 



188 LIFE OF 

harshness and cruelty; banishment to Mr. 
Creakle's villainous school; the poor mother's 
death; the worse banishment to London, and 
descent into warehouse drudgery; the strange 
shabby genteel, happy-go-lucky life with the 
Micawbers; the flight from intolerable ills in 
the forlorn hope that David's aunt will take 
pity on him. Here the scene changes again. 
Miss Betsy Trotwood, a fine old gnarled piece 
of womanhood, places the boy at school at Can- 
terbury, where he makes acquaintance with 
Agnes, the woman whom he marries far, far 
on in the story ; and with her father, Mr. Wick- 
ham, a somewhat port- wine-loving lawyer ; and 
with Uriah Heep, the fawning villain of the 
piece. How David is first articled to a proc- 
tor in Doctors' Commons, and then becomes a 
reporter, and then a successful author; and 
how he marries his first wife, the childish Dora, 
who dies ; and how, meanwhile, Uriah is effect- 
ing the general ruin, and aspiring to the hand 
of Agnes, till his villainies are detected and his 
machinations defeated by Micawber — how all 
this comes about, would be a long story to tell. 
But, as is usual with Dickens, there are subsid- 
iary rills of story running into the main stream, 
and by one of these I should like to linger a 



CHARLES DICKENS 189 

moment. The head-boy, and a kind of par- 
lour-boarder, at Mr. Creakle's establishment, 
is one Steerforth, the spoilt only son of a 
widow. This Steerforth, David meets again 
when both are young men, and they go down 
together to Yarmouth, and there David is the 
means of making him known to a family of 
fisherfolk. He is rich, handsome, with an in- 
describable charm, according to his friend's 
testimony, and he induces the fisherman's niece, 
the pretty Em'ly, to desert her home, and the 
young boat-builder to whom she is engaged, 
and to fly to Italy. Now to this story, as 
Dickens tells it, French criticism objects that 
he dwells exclusively on the sin and sorrow, 
and sets aside that in which the French novel- 
ist would delight, viz., the mad force and irre- 
sistible sway of passion. To which English 
criticism may, I think, reply, that the * pity of 
it,' the wide-working desolation, are as essen- 
tially part of such an event as the passion ; and, 
therefore, even from an exclusively artistic 
point of view, just as fit subjects for the 
novelist. 

While David Copperfield was in progress, 
Dickens started on a new venture. He had 
often before projected a periodical, and twice, 



190 LIFE OF 

as we have seen, — once in Master Humphrey's 
Clock J and again as editor of The Daily News, 
— had attempted quasi- journalism or its real- 
ity. But now at last he had struck the right 
vein. He had discovered a means of utilizing 
his popularity, and imparting it to a paper, 
without being under the crushing necessity of 
writing the whole of that paper himself. The 
first number of Household Words appeared 
on the 30th of March, 1850. 

The ' preliminary word ' heralds the paper 
in thoroughly characteristic fashion, and is, not 
unnaturally, far more personal in tone than the 
first leading article of the first number of The 
Daily News, though that, too, be it said in pass- 
ing, bears traces, through all its officialism, of 
having come from the same pen.^ In intro- 
ducing Household Words to his new readers, 
Dickens speaks feelingly, eloquently, of his 
own position as a wi'iter, and the responsibili- 
ties attached to his popularity, and tells of his 
hope that a future of instruction, and amuse- 
ment, and kindly playful fancy may be in store 

^ As, for instance, in such expressions as this : * This 
stamp on newspapers is not like the stamp on universal 
medicine bottles, which licenses anything, however false 
and monstrous.' 



CHARLES DICKENS 191 

for the paper. Nor were his happy anticipa- 
tions belied. All that he had promised, he 
gave. Household Words found an entrance 
into innumerable homes, and was everywhere 
recognized as a friend. Never did editor more 
strongly impress his own personality upon his 
staff. The articles were sprightly, amusing, 
interesting, and instructive too — often very 
instructive, but always in an interesting way. 
That was one of the periodical's main features. 
The pill of knowledge was always presented 
gilt. Taking Household Words and All the 
Year Bound together — and for this purpose 
they may properly be regarded as one and the 
same paper, because the change of name and 
proprietorship in 1859 ^ brought no change in 
form or character, — taking them together, I 
say, they contain a vast quantity of very pleas- 
ant, if not very profound, reading. Even 
apart from the stories, one can do very much 
worse than while away an hour, now and again, 
in gleaning here and there in their pages. 
Among Dickens's own contributions may be 
mentioned The Child's History of England^ 

* The last number of Household Words appeared on 
the 28th of May, 1859, and the first of All the Year 
Round on the 30th of April, 1859. 



192 LIFE OF 

and Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices — 
being the record of an excursion made by him 
in 1857, with Mr. Wilkie CoUins; and The 
Uncommercial Traveler papers. While as to 
stories, Hard Times appeared in Household. 
Words; and The Tale of Two Cities and 
Great Expectations, in All the Year Round. 
And to the Christmas numbers he gave some of 
his best and daintiest work. Nor were novels 
and tales by other competent hands wanting. 
Here it was that Mrs. Gaskell gave to the world 
those papers on Cranford that are so full of a 
dainty, delicate humour, and My Lady Lud- 
low, and North and South, and A Dark Night's 
Work, Here, too, Mr. Wilkie Collins wove 
together his ingenious threads of plot and 
mystery, in The Moonstone, The Woman in 
White, and No Name. And here also Lord 
Lytton published A Strange Story, and 
Charles Reade his Very Hard Cash. 

The year 1851 opened sadly for Dickens. 
His wife, who had been oonfined of a daughter 
in the preceding August, was so seriously un- 
well that he had to take her to Malvern. His 
father, to whom, notwithstanding all financial 
peculiarities and eccentricities, he was greatly 
attached, died on the 31st of March; and on the 



CPIARLES DICKENS 193 

14th of April his infant daughter died also. 
In connection with this latter death there oc- 
curred an incident of great pathos. Dickens 
had come up from Malvern on the 14th, to take 
the chair at the dinner on behalf of the Theat- 
rical Fund, and looking in at Devonshire Ter- 
race on his way, played with the children, as 
was his wont, and fondled the baby, and then 
went on to the London Tavern.^ Shortly after 
he left the house, the child died, suddenly. The 
news was communicated to Forster, who was 
also at the dinner, and he decided that it would 
be better not to tell the poor father till the 
speech of the evening had been made. So 
Dickens made his speech, and a brilliant one 
it was — it is brilliant even as one reads it now, 
in the coldness of print, without the glamour 
of the speaker's voice and presence; and yet 
brilliant with an undertone of sadness, which 
the recent death of the speaker's father would 
fully explain. And Forster, wlio knew of the 
yet later blow impending on his friend, had 
to sit by and listen as that dear friend, all 

^ There are one or two slight discrepancies between 
Forster's narrative and that of Miss Dickens and Miss 
Hogarth. The latter are clearly more likely to be right 
on such a matter. 



194 LIFE OF 

unconscious of the dread application of the 
words, spoke of * the actor ' having * sometimes 
to come from scenes of sickness, of suffering, 
ay, even of death itself, to play his part ; ' and 
then he went on to tell how 'all of us, in our 
spheres, have often to do violence to our feel- 
ings, and to hide our hearts in fighting this 
great battle of life, and in discharging our 
duties and responsibilities.' 

In the same year, 1851, Dickens left the 
house in Devonshire Terrace, now grown too 
small for his enlarging household, and, after 
a long sojourn at Broadstairs, moved into Tav- 
istock House, in Tavistock Square. Here 
Bleak House was begun at the end of Novem- 
ber, the first number being published in the 
ensuing March. It is a fine work of art un- 
questionably, a very fine work of art — the can- 
vas all crowded with living figures, and yet 
the main lines of the composition well-ordered 
and harmonious. Two threads of interest run 
through the story, one following the career of 
Lady Dedlock, and the other tracing the influ- 
ence of a great Chancery suit on the victims 
immeshed in its toils. From the first these two 
threads are distinct, and yet happily inter- 
woven. Let us take Lady Dedlock's thread 



CHARLES DICKENS 195 

first. She is the wife of Sir Leicester Ded- 
lock, whose ' family is as old as the hills, and a 
great deal more respectable ' ; and she is still 
very beautiful, though no longer in the bloom 
of youth, and she is cold and haughty of man- 
ner, as a woman of highest fashion sometimes 
may be. But in her past lurks an ugly hidden 
secret ; and a girl of sweetest disposition walks 
her kindly course through the story, who might 
call Lady Dedlock * mother.' This secret, or 
perhaps rather the fact that there is a secret at 
all, she reveals in a moment of surprise to the 
family lawyer; and she lays herself still further 
open to his suspicions by going, disguised in 
her maid's clothes, to the poor graveyard where 
her former lover lies buried. The lawyer 
worms the whole story out, and, just as he is 
going to reveal it, is murdered by the French 
maid aforesaid. But the murder comes too 
late to save my lady, nay, adds to her difficul- 
ties. She flies, in anticipation of the disclosure 
of her secret, and is found dead at the grave- 
yard gate. To such end has the sin of her 
youth led her. So once again has Dickens 
dwelt, not on the passionate side of wrongful 
love, but on its sorrow. Now take the other 
thread — the Chancery suit — * Jarndyce versus 



196 LIFE OF 

J arndyce,' a suit held in awful reverence by the 
profession as a * monument of Chancery prac- 
tice ' — a suit seemingly interminable, till, after 
long, long years of wrangling and litigation, 
the fortuitous discovery of a will settles it all, 
with the result that the whole estate has been 
swallowed up in the costs. And how about 
the litigants? How about poor Richard Car- 
stone and his wife, whom we see, in the open- 
ing of the story, in all the heyday and happi- 
ness of 'their youth, strolling down to the court 
— they are its wards, — and wondering sadly 
over the ' headache and heartache ' of it all, 
and then saying, gleefully, * at all events Chan- 
cery will work none of its bad influence on us ^• 
' None of its bad influence on us!' — poor lad, 
whose life is wasted and character impaired in 
following the mirage of the suit, and who is 
killed by the mockery of its end. Thus do the 
two intertwined stories run; but apart from 
these, though all in place and keeping, and 
helping on the general development, there is a 
whole profusion of noticeable characters. In 
enumerating them, however baldly, one 
scarcely knows where to begin. The lawyer 
group — clerks and all — is excellent. Dickens's 
early experiences stood him in good stead here. 



CHARLES DICKENS 197 

Excellent too are those studies in the ways of 
impecuniosity and practical shiftlessness, Har- 
old Skimpole, the airy, irresponsible, light- 
hearted epicurean, with his pretty tastes and 
dilettante accomplishments, and Mrs. Jellyby, 
the philanthropist, whose eyes ' see nothing 
nearer ' than Borrioboola-Gha, on the banks 
of the far Niger, and never dwell to any pur- 
pose on the utter discomfort of the home of her 
husband and children. Characters of this kind 
no one ever delineated better than Dickens. 
That Leigh Hunt, the poet and essayist, who 
had sat for the portrait of Skimpole, was not 
altogether flattered by the likeness, is compre- 
hensible enough ; and in truth it is unfair, both 
to painter and model, that we should take such 
portraits too seriously. Landor, who sat for 
the thunderous and kindly Boythorn, had more 
reason to be satisfied. Besides these one may 
mention Joe, the outcast; and Mr. Turveydrop, 
the beau of the school of the Regency — how 
horrified he would have been at the juxtapo- 
sition — and George, the keeper of the rifle 
gallery, a fine soldierly figure ; and Mr. Bucket, 
the detective — though Dickens had a tendency 
to idealize the abilities of the police force. As 
to Sir Leicester Dedlock, I think he is, on the 



198 LIFE OF 

whole, ' mine author's ' best study of the aris- 
tocracy, a direction in which Dickens's forte did 
not lie, for Sir Leicester is a gentleman, and 
receives the terrible blow that falls on him in 
a spirit at once chivalrous and human. 

What between Bleak Houses Household 
Words, and The Child's History of England, 
Dickens, in the spring of 1853, was overworked 
and ill. Brighton failed to restore him; and 
he took his family over to Boulogne in June, 
occupying there a house belonging to a certain 
M. de Beaucourt. Town, dwelling, and land- 
lord, all suited him exactly. Boulogne he de- 
clared to be admirable for its picturesqueness 
in buildings and life, and equal in some respects 
to Naples itself. The dwelling, ' a doll's house 
of many rooms,' embowered in roses, and with 
a terraced garden, was a place after his own 
heart. While as to the landlord — he was 
' wonderful.' Dickens never tires of extolling 
his virtues, his generosity, his kindness, his 
anxiety to please, his pride in ' the property.' 
All the pleasant delicate quaint traits in the 
man's character are irradiated as if with French 
sunshine in his tenant's description. It is a 
dainty little picture and painted with the kind- 
liest of brushes. Poor Beaucourt, he was 



CHARLES DICKENS 199 

* inconsolable ' when he and Dickens finally- 
parted three years afterwards — for twice again 
did the latter occupy a house, but not this same 
house, on ' the property.' Many were the 
tears that he shed, and even the garden, the 
loved garden, went forlorn and unweeded. 
But that was in 1856. The parting was not 
so final and terrible in the October of 1853, 
when Dickens, having finished Bleak House^ 
started with Mr. Wilkie Collins, and Augustus 
Egg, the artist, for a holiday tour in Switzer- 
land and Italy. 



200 LIFE OF 



CHAPTER X 

ON his return to England, just after the 
Christmas of 1853, Dickens gave his 
first public readings. He had, as we 
have seen, read The Chimes some nine years 
before, to a select few among his literary 
friends ; and at Lausanne he had similarly read 
portions of Domhey and Son. But the three 
readings given at Birmingham, on the 27th, 
29th, and 30th December, 1853, were, in every 
sense, public entertainments, and, except that 
the proceeds were devoted entirely to the local 
Institute, differed in no way from the famous 
readings by which he afterwards realized what 
may almost be called a fortune. The idea of 
coming before the world in this new character 
had long been in his mind. As early as 1846, 
after the private reading at Lausanne, he had 
written to Forster: * I was thinking the other 
day that in these days of lectures and readings, 
a great deal of money might possibly be made 
(if it were not infra dig.) by one's having read- 
ings of one's own books. I think it would take 



CHARLES DICKENS 201 

immensely. What do you say? ' Forster said 
then, and said consistently throughout, that he 
held the thing to he ' infra dig.f and unworthy 
of Dickens's position; and in this I think one 
may venture to assert that Forster was wrong. 
There can surely be no reason why a popular 
"WTiter, who happens also to be an excellent 
elocutionist, should not afford general pleasure 
by giving sound to his prose, and a voice to his 
imaginary characters. Nor is it opposed to 
the fitness of things that he should be paid for 
his skill. If, however, one goes further in 
Dickens's case, and asks whether the readings 
did not involve too great an expenditure of 
time, energy, and, as we shall see, ultimately of 
life, and whether he would not, in the highest 
sense, have been better employed over his 
books, — why then the question becomes more 
difficult of solution. But, after all, each man 
must answer such questions for himself. 
Dickens may have felt, as the years began to 
tell, that he required the excitement of the 
readings for mental stimulus, and that he 
would not even have written as much as he did 
without them. Be that as it may, the success 
at Birmingham, where a sum of from 400/. to 
500Z. was realized, the requests that poured in 



202 LIFE OF 

upon him to read at other places, the invariably 
renewed success whenever he did so, the clear 
evidence that very much money might be 
earned if he determined to come forward on 
his own account, all must have contributed to 
scatter Forster's objections to the winds. On 
the 29th of April, 1858, at St. Martin's Hall, 
in London, he started his career as a paid pub- 
lic reader, and he continued to read, with 
shorter or longer periods of intermission, till 
his death. But into the storj^ of his profes- 
sional tours it is not my intention just now to 
enter. I shall only stay to say a few words 
about the character and quality of his readings. 
That they were a success can readily be 
accounted for. The mere desire to see and 
hear Dickens, the great Dickens, the novelist 
who was more than popular, who was the ob- 
ject of real personal affection on the part of 
the English-speaking race, — this would have 
drawn a crowd at any time. But Dickens was 
not the man to rely upon such sources of attrac- 
tion, any more than an actress who is really an 
actress will consent to rely exclusively on her 
good looks. ' Whatever is worth doing at all 
is worth doing well,' such as we have seen was 
one of the governing principles of his life ; and 



CHARLES DICKENS 203 

he read very well. Of nervousness there was 
no trace in his composition. To some one who 
asked him whether he ever felt any shyness as 
a speaker, he answered, ' Not in the least ; the 
first time I took the chair (at a public dinner) 
I felt as much confidence as if I had done the 
thing a hundred times.' This of course 
helped him much as a reader, and gave him full 
command over all his gifts. But the gifts 
were also assiduously cultivated. He laboured, 
one might almost say, agonized, to make him- 
self a master of the art. Mr. Dolby, who acted 
as his * manager,' during the tours undertaken 
from 1866 to 1870, tells us that before produc- 
ing Dr. Marigold, he not only gave a kind 
of semi-public rehearsal, but had rehearsed it 
to himself considerably over two hundred 
times. Writing to Forster Dickens says : ' You 
have no idea how I have worked at them [the 
readings] ... I have tested all the seri- 
ous passion in them by everything I know, 
made the humorous points much more humor- 
ous; corrected my utterance of certain 
words; ... I learnt Dombey like the 
rest, and did it to myself often twice a day, 
with exactly the same pains as at night, over, 
and over, and over again.' 



204 LIFE OF 

The results justified the care and effort be- 
stowed. There are, speaking generally, two 
schools of readers: those who dramatize what 
they read, and those who read simply, audibly, 
with every attention to emphasis and point, 
but with no effort to do more than slightly 
indicate differences of personage or character. 
To the latter school Thackeray belonged. He 
read so as to be perfectly heard, and perfectly 
understood, and so that the innate beauty of 
his literary style might have full effect. 
Dickens read quite differently. He read not 
as a writer to whom style is everything, but as 
an actor throwing himself into the world he 
wishes to bring before his hearers. He was so 
careless indeed of pure literature, in this par- 
ticular matter, that he altered his books for the 
readings, eliminating much of the narrative, 
and emphasizing the dialogue. He was pre- 
eminently the dramatic reader. Carlyle, who 
had been dragged to Hanover Rooms, to 
* the complete upsetting,* as he says, * of my 
evening habitudes, and spiritual composure,' 
was yet constrained to declare : * Dickens does 
it capitally, such as it is; acts better than any 
Macready in the world; a whole tragic, comic, 
heroic, theatre visible, performing under one 



CHARLES DICKENS 205 

hat, and keeping us laughing — in a sorry way, 
some of us thought — the whole night. He is 
a good creature, too, and makes fifty or sixty 
pounds by each of these readings.' ' A whole 
theatre ' — that is just the right expression 
minted for us by the great coiner of phrases. 
Dickens, by mere play of voice, for the ges- 
tures were comparatively sober, placed before 
you, on his imaginary stage, the men and 
women he had created. There Dr. Marigold 
pattered his cheap- jack phrases; and Mrs. 
Gamp and Betsy Prig, with throats rendered 
husky by much gin, had their memorable quar- 
rel; and Sergeant Buzfuz bamboozled that 
stupid jury; and Boots at the Swan told his 
pretty tale of child elopement; and Fagin, in 
his hoarse Jew whisper, urged Bill Sikes to his 
last foul deed of murder. Ay me, in the great 
hush of the past there are tones of the reader's 
voice that still linger in my ears! I seem to 
hear once more the agonized quick utterance 
of poor Nancy, as she pleads for life, and the 
dread stillness after the ruffian's cruel blows 
have fallen on her upturned face. Again 
comes back to me the break in Bob Cratchit's 
voice, as he speaks of the death of Tiny Tim. 
As of old I listen to poor little Chops, the 



206 LIFE OF 

dwarf, declaring, very piteously, that his ' fash- 
ionable friends ' don't use him well, and put 
him on the mantel-piece when he refuses to 
* have in more champagne-wine,' and lock him 
in the sideboard when he ' won't give up his 
property.' And I see — ^yes, I declare I see, 
as I saw when Dickens was reading, such was 
the illusion of voice and gesture — that dying 
flame of Scrooge's fire, which leaped up when 
Marley's ghost came in, and then fell again. 
Nor can I forbear to mention, among these 
reminiscences, that there is also a passage in 
one of Thackeray's lectures that is still in my 
ears as on the evening when I heard it. It is 
a passage in which he spoke of the love that 
children had for the works of his more popular 
rival, and told how his own children would 
come to him and ask, ' Why don't you write 
books like Mr. Dickens | ' 



CHARLES DICKENS 207 



CHAPTER XI 

GHANCERY had occupied a prominent 
place in Bleak House. Philosophical 
radicalism occupied the same kind of 
position in Hard Times, which was commenced 
in the number of Household Words for the 1st 
of April, 1854. The book, when afterwards 
published in a complete form, bore a dedica- 
tion to Carlyle ; and very fittingly so, for much 
of its philosophy is his. Dickens, like Kings- 
ley, and like Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Froude, and 
so many other men of genius and ability, had 
come under the influence of the old Chelsea 
sage.^ And what are the ideas which Hard 
Times is thus intended to popularize? These: 
that men are not merely intellectual calculating 
machines, with reason and self-interest for 
motive power, but creatures possessing also 
afl'ections, feelings, fancy — a whole world of 
emotions that lie outside the ken of the older 

^ Dickens did not accept the whole Carlyle creed. He 
retained a sort of belief in the collective wisdom of the 
people^ which Carlyle certainly did not share. 



208 LIFE OF 

school of political economists. Therefore, to 
imagine that they can live and flourish on facts 
alone is a fallacy and pernicious ; as is also the 
notion that any human relations can be perma- 
nently established on a basis of pure supply 
and demand. If we add to this an unlimited 
contempt for Parliament, as a place where the 
national dustmen are continually stirring the 
national dust to no purpose at all, why then we 
are pretty well advanced in the philosophy of 
Carlyle. And how does Dickens illustrate 
these points? We are at Coketown, a place, 
as its name implies, of smoke and manufacture. 
Here lives and flourishes Thomas Gradgrind, 
' a man of realities ; a man of facts and calcu- 
lations ' ; not essentially a bad man, but bound 
in an iron system as in a vice. He brings up 
his children on knowledge and enlightened 
self-interest exclusively; and the boy becomes 
a cub and a mean thief, and the girl marries, 
quite without love, a certain blustering Mr. 
Bounderby, and is as nearly as possible led 
astray by the first person who approaches her 
with the language of gallantry and sentiment. 
Mr. Bounderby, her husband, is, one may add, 
a man who, in mere lying bounce, makes out 
his humble origin to be more humble than it is. 



CHARLES DICKENS 209 

On the other side of the picture are Mr. Sleary 
and his circus troupe; and Cissy Jupe, the 
daughter of the clown; and the almost saintly 
figures of Stephen Blackpool, and Rachel, a 
working man and a working woman. With 
these people facts are as naught, and self- 
interest as dust in the balance. Mr. Sleary has 
a heart which no brandy-and-water can harden, 
and he enables Mr. Gradgrind to send off the 
wretched cub to America, refusing any guer- 
don but a glass of his favourite beverage. 
The circus troupe are kindly, simple, loving 
folk. Cissy Jupe proves the angel of the 
Gradgrind household. Stephen is the victim 
of unjust persecution on the part of his own 
class, is suspected, by young Gradgrind's 
machinations, of the theft committed by that 
young scoundrel, falls into a disused pit as he 
is coming to vindicate his character, and only 
lives long enough to forgive his wrongs, and 
clasp in death the hand of Rachel — a hand 
which in life could not be his, as he had a wife 
alive who was a drunkard and worse. A 
marked contrast, is it not? On one side all 
darkness, and on the other all light. The 
demons of fact and self-interest opposed to 
the angels of fancy and unselfishness. A con- 



210 LIFE OF 

trast too violent unquestionably. Exaggera- 
tion is the fault of the novel. One may at once 
allow, for instance, that Rachel and Stephen, 
though human nature in its infinite capacity 
may include such characters, are scarcely a 
typical working woman and working man. 
But then neither, heaven be praised, are Cou- 
peau the sot, and Gervaise the drab, in M. 
Zola's Drink — and, for my part, I think 
Rachel and Stephen the better company. 

* Sullen socialism ' — such is Macaulay's view 
of the political philosophy of Hard Times. 
* Entirely right in main drift and purpose ' — 
such is the verdict of Mr. Ruskin. Who shall 
decide between the two? or, if a decision be 
necessary, then I would venture to say, yes, 
entirely right in feeling. Dickens is right in 
sympathy for those who toil and suffer, right 
in desire to make their lives more human and 
beautiful, right in belief that the same human 
heart beats below all class distinctions. But, 
beyond this, a novelist only, not a philosopher, 
not fitted to grapple effectively with complex 
social and political problems, and to solve them 
to right conclusions. There are some things 
unfortunately which even the best and kindest 
instincts cannot accomplish. 



CHARLES DICKENS 211 

The last chapter of Hard Times appeared 
in the number of Household Words for the 
12th of August, 1854, and the first number of 
Little Dorrit came out at Christmas, 1855. 
Between these dates a great war had waxed 
and waned. The heart of England had been 
terribly moved by the story of the sufferings 
and privations which the army had had to 
undergo amid the snows of a Russian winter. 
From the trenches before Sebastopol the news- 
paper correspondents had sent terrible ac- 
counts of death and disease, and of ills which, 
as there seemed room for suspicion, might 
have been prevented by better management. 
Through long disuse the army had rusted in 
its scabbard, and everything seemed to go 
wrong but the courage of officers and men. 
A great demand arose for reform in the whole 
administration of the country. A movement, 
now much forgotten, though not fruitless at 
the time, was started for the purpose of making 
the civil service more efficient, and putting 
John Bull's house in order. ' Administrative 
Reform,' such was the cry of the moment, and 
Dickens uttered it with the full strength of his 
lungs. He attended a great meeting held at 
Drury Lane Theatre on the 27th of June, in 



212 LIFE OF 

furtherance of the cause, and made what he 
declared to be his first political speech. He 
spoke on the subject again at the dinner of the 
Theatrical Fund. He urged on his friends in 
the press to the attack. He was in the fore- 
front of the battle. And when his next novel, 
Little Dorritj appeared, there was the Civil 
Service, like a sort of gibbeted Punch, execut- 
ing the strangest antics. 

But the * Circumlocution Office,* where the 
clerks sit lazily devising all day long ' how not 
to do ' the business of the country, and devote 
their energies alternately to marmalade and 
general insolence, — the * Circumlocution Of- 
fice ' occupies after all only a secondary posi- 
tion in the book. The main interest of it cir- 
cles round the place that had at one time been 
almost a home to Dickens. Again he drew 
upon his earlier experiences. We are once 
more introduced into a debtor's prison. Lit- 
tle Dorrit is the child of the Marshalsea, born 
and bred within its walls, the sole thing living 
about the place on which its taint does not fall. 
Her worthless brother, her sister, her father — 
who is not only her father, but the ' father of 
the Marshalsea ' — ^the prison blight is on all 
three. Her father especially is a piece of 



CHARLES DICKENS 213 

admirable character-drawing. Dickens has 
often been accused of only catching the sur- 
face peculiarities of his personages, their out- 
ward tricks and obvious habits of speech and 
of mind. Such a study as Mr. Dorrit would 
alone be sufficient to rebut the charge. No 
novelist specially famed for dissecting charac- 
ter to its innermost recesses could exhibit a finer 
piece of mental analysis. We follow the poor 
weak creature's deterioration from the time 
when the helpless muddle in his affairs brings 
him into durance. We note how his sneaking 
pride seems to feed even on the garbage of his 
degradation. We see how little inward change 
there is in the man himself when there comes 
a transformation scene in his fortunes, and 
he leaves the Marshalsea wealthy and prosper- 
ous. It is all thoroughly worked out, perfect, 
a piece of really great art. No wonder that 
Mr. Clennam pities the child of such a father; 
indeed, considering what a really admirable 
woman she is, one only wonders that his pity 
does not sooner turn to love. 

Little Dorrit ran its course from December, 
1855, to June, 1857, and within that space of 
time there occurred two or three incidents in 
Dickens's career which should not pass unno- 



214 LIFE OF 

ticed. At the first of these dates he was in 
Paris, where he remained till the middle of 
May, 1856, greatly feted by the French world 
of letters and art; dining hither and thither; 
now enjoying an Arabian Nights sort of ban- 
quet given by Emile de Girardin, the popular 
journalist; now meeting George Sand, the 
great novelist, whom he describes as ' just the 
sort of woman in appearance whom you might 
suppose to be the queen's monthly nurse — 
chubby, matronly, swarthy, black-eyed ' ; then 
studying French art, and contrasting it with 
English art, somewhat to the disadvantage of 
the latter; anon superintending the translation 
of his works into French, and working hard 
at Little Dorrit; and all the while frequenting 
the Paris theatres with great assiduity and 
admiration. Meanwhile, too, on the 14th of 
March, 1856, a Friday, his lucky day as he con- 
sidered it, he had written a cheque for the pur- 
chase of Gad's Hill Place, at which he had so 
often looked when a little lad, living penuri- 
ously at Chatham — the house which it had been 
the object of his childish ambition to win for 
his own. 

So had merit proved to be not without its 
visible prize, literally a prize for good conduct. 



CHARLES DICKENS 215 

He took possession of the house in the follow- 
ing February, and turned workmen into it, 
and finished Little Dorrit there. At first the 
purchase was intended mainly as an invest- 
ment, and he only purposed to spend some por- 
tion of his time at Gad's Hill, letting it at 
other periods, and so recouping himself for the 
interest on the 1790Z. which it had cost, and for 
the further sums which he expended on im- 
provements. But as time went on it became 
his hobby, the love of his advancing years. 
He beautified here and beautified there, built a 
new drawing-room, added bedrooms, con- 
structed a tunnel under the road, erected in the 
' wilderness ' on the other side of the road a 
Swiss chalet, which had been presented to him 
by Fechter, the French-English actor, and in 
short indulged in all the thousand and one 
vagaries of a proprietor who is enamoured of 
his property. The matter seems to have been 
one of the family jokes; and when, on the 
Sunday before his death, he showed the con- 
servatory to his younger daughter, and said, 
' Well, Katey, now you see positively the last 
improvement at Gad's Hill,' there was a gen- 
eral laugh. But this is far on in the story; 
and very long before the building of the con- 



216 LIFE OF 

servatory, long indeed before the main other 
changes had been made, the idea of an in- 
vestment had been abandoned. In 1860 he 
sold Tavistock House, in London, and made 
Gad's Hill Place his final home. 

Even here, however, I am anticipating; for 
before getting to 1860 there is in Dickens's 
history a page which one would willingly turn 
over, if that were possible, in silence and sad- 
ness. But it is not possible. No account of 
his life would be complete, and what is of more 
importance, true, if it made no mention of his 
relations with his wife. 

For some time before 1858 Dickens had 
been in an over-excited, nervous, morbid state. 
During earlier manhood his animal spirits and 
fresh energy had been superb. Now, as the 
years advanced, and especially at this particu- 
lar time, the energy was the same; but it was 
accompanied by something of feverishness 
and disease. He could not be quiet. In the 
autumn of 1857 he wrote to Forster, ' I have 
now no relief but in action. I am become in- 
capable of rest. I am quite confident I should 
rust, break, and die if I spared myself. Much 
better to die doing.' And again, a little later, 
' If I couldn't walk fast and far, I should just 



CHARLES DICKENS 217 

explode and perish.' It was the foreshadowing 
of such utterances as these, and the constant 
wanderings to and fro for readings and 
theatricals and what not, that led Harriet Mar- 
tineau, who had known and greatly liked 
Dickens, to say after perusing the second vol- 
ume of his life, ' I am much struck by his hys- 
terical restlessness. It must have been terribly 
wearing to his wife.' On the other hand, there 
can be no manner of doubt that his wife wore 
7iim. ' Why is it,' he had said to Forster in 
one of the letters from which I have just 
quoted, 'that, as with poor David (Copper- 
field), a sense comes always crushing on me 
now, when I fall into low spirits, as of one 
happiness I have missed in life, and one friend 
and .companion I have never made? ' And 
again : ' I find that the skeleton in my domes- 
tic closet is becoming a pretty big one.' Then 
come even sadder confidences : ' Poor Cather- 
ine and I are not made for each other, and 
there is no help for it. It is not only that she 
makes me uneasy and unhappy, but that I 
make her so too, and much more so. She is 
exactly what you know in the way of being 
amiable and complying, but we are strangely 
ill-assorted for the bond there is between 



218 LIFE OF 

us. . . . Her temperament will not go with 
mine.' And at last, in March, 1858, two 
months before the end: * It is not with me a 
matter of will, or trial, or sufferance, or good 
humour, or making the best of it, or making 
the worst of it, any longer. It is all despair- 
ingly over.' So, after living together for 
twenty years, these two went their several 
ways in May, 1858. Dickens allowed to his 
wife an income of 600Z. a year, and the eldest 
son went to live with her. The other children 
and their aunt, Miss Hogarth, remained with 
Dickens himself. 

Scandal has not only a poisonous, but a busy 
tongue, and when a well-known public man 
and his wife agree to live apart, the beldame 
seldom neglects to give her special version of 
the affair. So it happened here. Some miser- 
able rumour was whispered about to the detri- 
ment of Dickens's morals. He was at the 
time, as we have seen, in an utterly morbid, 
excited state, sore doubtless with himself, and 
altogether out of mental condition, and the lie 
stung him almost to madness. He published 
an article branding it as it deserved in the num- 
ber of Household Words for the 12th of June, 
1858. 



CHARLES DICKENS 219 

So far his course of action was justifiable. 
Granted that it was judicious to notice the 
rumour at all, and to make his private affairs 
the matter of public comment, then there was 
nothing in the terms of the article to which 
objection could be taken. It contained no re- 
flection of any kind on Mrs. Dickens. It was 
merely an honest man's indignant protest 
against an anonymous libel which implicated 
others as well as himself. Whether the publi- 
cation, however, was judicious is a different 
matter. Forster thinks not. He holds that 
Dickens had altogether exaggerated the pub- 
lic importance of the rumour, and the extent 
of its circulation. And this, according to my 
own recollection, is entirely true. I was a lad 
at the time, but a great lover of Dickens's 
works, as most lads then were, and I well re- 
member the feeling of surprise and regret 
which that article created among us of the 
general public. At the same time, it is only 
fair to Dickens to recollect that the lying story 
was, at least, so far fraught with danger to 
his reputation, that Mrs. Dickens would seem 
for a time to have believed it ; and further, that 
Dickens occupied a very peculiar position to- 
wards the public, and a position that might 



220 LIFE OF 

well iri his own estimation, and even in ours, 
give singular importance to the general belief 
in his personal character. 

This point will bear dwelling upon. Dickens 
claimed, and claimed truly, that the relation 
between himself and the public was one of 
exceptional sympathy and affection. Perhaps 
an illustration will best show what that kind 
of relationship was. Thackeray tells of two 
ladies with whom he had, at different times, 
discussed The Christmas Carol, and how each 
had concluded by saying of the author, ' God 
bless him ! ' God bless him ! — that was the sort 
of feeling towards himself which Dickens had 
succeeded in producing in most English hearts. 
He had appealed from the first and so con- 
stantly to every kind and gentle emotion, had 
illustrated so often what is good and true in 
human character, had pleaded the cause of the 
weak and suffering with such assiduity, had 
been so scathingly indignant at all wrong ; and 
he had moreover shown such a manly and 
chivalrous purity in all his utterances with re- 
gard to women, that his readers felt for him a 
kind of personal tenderness, quite distinct 
from their mere admiration for his genius as 
a writer. Nor was that feeling based on his 



CHARLES DICKENS 221 

books alone. So far as one could learn at the 
time, no great dissimilarity existed between 
the author and the man. We all remember 
Byron's corrosive remark on the sentimentalist 
Sterne, that he ' whined over a dead ass, and 
allowed his mother to die of hunger.* But 
Dickens's feelings were by no means confined 
to his pen. He was known to be a good father 
and a good friend, and of perfect truth and 
honesty. The kindly tolerance for the frailties 
of a father or brother which he admired in Lit- 
tle Dorrit, he was ready to extend to his own 
father and his own brother. He was most 
assiduous in the prosecution of his craft as a 
wi'iter, and yet had time and leisure of heart at 
command for all kinds of good and charitable 
work. His private character had so far stood 
above all floating cloud of suspicion. 

That Dickens felt an honourable pride in the 
general affection he inspired, can readily be 
understood. He also felt, even more honour- 
ably, its great responsibility. He knew that 
his books and he himself were a power for 
good, and he foresaw how greatly his in- 
fluence would suffer if a suspicion of hypoc- 
risy — the vice at which he had always girded — 
were to taint his reputation. Here, for in- 



222 LIFE OF 

stance, in Little Dorrit, the work written in 
the thick of his home troubles, he had written 
of Clennam as ' a man who had, deep-rooted 
in his nature, a behef in all the gentle and good 
things his life had been without,' and had 
shown how this belief had * saved Clennam 
still from the whimpering weakness and cruel 
selfishness of holding that because such a hap- 
piness or such a virtue had not come into his 
little path, or worked well for him, therefore 
it was not in the great scheme, but was re- 
ducible, when found in appearance, to the 
basest elements.' A touching utterance if it 
expressed the real feeling of a writer sorely 
disappointed and in great trouble; but an 
utterance moving rather to contempt if it came 
from a writer who had transferred his affec- 
tions from his wife to some other woman. I 
do not wonder, therefore, that Dickens, excited 
and exasperated, spoke out, though I think 
it would have been better if he had kept 
silence. 

But he did other things that were not jus- 
tifiable. He quarrelled with Messrs. Brad- 
bury and Evans, his publishers, because they 
did not use their influence to get Punchy a 
periodical in which Dickens had no interest. 



CHARLES DICKENS 223 

to publish the personal statement that had 
appeared in Household Words; and worse, 
much worse, he wrote a letter, which ought 
never to have been written, detailing the 
grounds on which he and his wife had sepa- 
rated. This letter, dated the 28th of May, 
1858, was addressed to his secretary, Arthur 
Smith, and was to be shown to any one in- 
terested. Arthur Smith showed it to the Lon- 
don correspondent of The New York Tribune, 
who naturally caused it to be published in that 
paper. Then Dickens was horrified. He was 
a man of far too high and chivalrous feeling 
not to know that the letter contained statements 
with regard to his wife's failings which ought 
never to have been made public. He knew as 
well as any one, that a literary man ought not 
to take the world into his confidence on such 
a subject. Ever afterwards he referred to the 
letter as his ' violated letter.' But, in truth, 
the wrong went deeper than the publication. 
The letter should never have been written, 
certainly never sent to Arthur Smith for gen- 
eral perusal. Dickens's only excuse is the fact 
that he was clearly not himself at the time, 
and that he never fell into a like error again. 
It is, however, sad to notice how entirely his 



224 LIFE OF 

wife seems to have passed out of his affection. 
The reference to her in his will is almost 
unkind; and when death was on him she 
seems not to have been summoned to his 
bedside. 



CHARLES DICKENS 225 



CHAPTER XII 

OICKENS'S career as a reader reading 
for money commenced on the 29th of 
April, 1858, while the trouble about 
his wife was at the thickest; and, after 
reading in London on sixteen nights, he 
made a reading tour in the provinces, and in 
Scotland and Ireland. In the following year 
he read likewise. But meanwhile, which is 
more important to us than his readings, he was 
writing another book. On the 30th of April, 
1859, in the first number of All the Year 
Rounds was begun The Tale of Two Cities, 
a simultaneous publication in monthly parts 
being also commenced. 

The Tale of Two Cities is a tale of the great 
French Revolution of 1793, and the two cities 
in question are London and Paris, — London 
as it lay comparatively at peace in the days 
when George III. was king, and Paris run- 
ning blood and writhing in the fierce fire of 

^ His foolish quarrel with Bradbury and Evans had 
necessitated the abandonment of Household Words. 



226 LIFE OF 

anarchy and mob rule. A powerful book, un- 
questionably. No doubt there is in its heat and 
glare a reflection from Carlyle's French Revo- 
lution, a book for which Dickens had the great- 
est admiration. But that need not be regarded 
as a demerit. Dickens is no pale copyist, and 
adds fervour to what he borrows. His pic- 
tures of Paris in revolution are as fine as the 
London scenes in Barnahy Rudge; and the 
interweaving of the story with public events 
is even better managed in the later book than 
in the earlier story of the Gordon riots. And 
the story, what does it tell? It tells of a cer- 
tain Dr. Manette, who, after long years of 
imprisonment in the Bastile, is restored to his 
daughter in London; and of a young French 
noble, who has assumed the name of Darnay, 
and left France in horror of the doings of his 
order, and who marries Dr. JVIanette's daugh- 
ter; and of a young English barrister, able 
enough in his profession, but careless of per- 
sonal success, and much addicted to port wine, 
and bearing a striking personal resemblance to 
the young French noble. These persons, and 
others, being drawn to Paris by various strong 
inducements, Darnay is condemned to death 
as a ci-devant noble, and the ne'er-do-weel bar- 



CHARLES DICKENS 227 

rister, out of the great pure love he bears to 
Darnay's wife, succeeds in dying for him. 
That is the tale's bare outline; and if any one 
says of the book that it is in parts melodra- 
matic, one may fitly answer that never was any 
portion of the world's history such a thorough 
piece of melodrama as the French Revo- 
lution. 

With The Tale of Two Cities Hablot K. 
Browne's connection with Dickens, as the illus- 
trator of his books, came to an end. The 
Sketches had been illustrated by Cruikshank, 
who was the great popular illustrator of the 
time, and it is amusing to read, in the preface 
to the first edition of the first series, pub- 
lished in 1836, how the trembling young 
author placed himself, as it were, under the 
protection of the ' well-known individual who 
had frequently contributed to the success of 
similar undertakings.' Cruikshank also illus- 
trated Oliver Twist; and indeed, with an arro- 
gance which unfortunately is not incompatible 
with genius, afterwards set up a rather pre- 
posterous claim to have been the real originator 
of that book, declaring that he had worked 
out the story in a series of etchings, and that 
Dickens had illustrated hirrij and not he 



228 LIFE OF 

Dickens.^ But apart from the drawings for 
the Sketches and Oliver Twist, and the first 
few drawings by Seymour and two drawings 
by Buss ^ in Pickwick, and some drawings by 
Cattermole in Master Humphrey's Clock, and 
by Samuel Palmer in the Pictures from Italy, 
and by various hands in the Christmas stories 
— apart from these, Browne, or ' Phiz,' had 
executed the illustrations to Dickens's novels. 
Nor, with all my admiration for certain excel- 
lent qualities which his work undeniably pos- 
sessed, do I think that this was altogether a 
good thing. Such, I know, is not a popular 
opinion. But I confess I am unable to agree 
with those critics who, from their remarks on 
the recent jubilee edition of Pickwick, seem 
to think his illustrations sp pre-eminently fine 
that they should be permanently associated 
with Dickens's stories. The editor of that 
edition was, in my view, quite right in treating 
Browne's illustrations as practically obsolete. 

2 See his pamphlet, The Artist and the Author. 
The matter is fully discussed in his life by Mr. Blan- 
chard Jerrold. 

* Buss's illustrations were executed under great dis- 
advantages, and are bad. Those of Seymour are ex- 
cellent. 



CHARLES DICKENS 229 

The value of Dickens's works is perennial, and 
Browne's illustrations represent the art fashion 
of a time only. So, too, I am unable to see 
any great cause to regret that Cruikshank's 
artistic connection with Dickens came to an 
end so soon.* For both Browne and Cruik- 
shank were pre-eminently caricaturists, and 
caricaturists of an old school. The latter had 
no idea of beauty. His art, very great art in 
its way, was that of grotesqueness and exag- 
geration. He never drew a lady or gentleman 
in his life. And though Browne, in my view 
much the lesser artist, was superior in these 
respects to Cruikshank, yet he too drew the 
most hideous Pecksniffs, and Tom Pinches, 
and Joey B.'s, and a whole host of characters 
quite unreal and absurd. The mischief of it 
is, too, that Dickens's humour will not bear 
caricaturing. The defect of his own art as a 
writer is that it verges itself too often on cari- 
cature. Exaggeration is its bane. When, for 
instance, he makes the rich alderman in The 
Chimes eat up poor Trotty Veck's little last 
tit-bit of tripe, we are clearly in the region of 
broad farce. When Mr. Pancks, in Little 

* I am always sorry, however^ that Cruikshank did not 
illustrate the Christmas stories. 



230 LIFE OF 

Dorritj so far abandons the ordinary ways of 
mature rent collectors as to ask a respectable 
old accountant to * give him a back/ in the 
Marshalsea court, and leaps over his head, we 
are obviously in a world of pantomime. 
Dickens's comic effects are generally quite 
forced enough, and should never be further 
forced when translated into the sister art of 
drawing. Rather, if anything, should they 
be attenuated. But unfortunately exaggera- 
tion happened to be inherent in the draftsman- 
ship of both Cruikshank and Browne. And, 
having said this, I may as well finish with the 
subject of the illustrations to Dickens's books. 
Our Mutual Friend was illustrated by Mr. 
Marcus Stone, R.A., then a rising young art- 
ist, and the son of Dickens's old friend, Frank 
Stone. Here the designs fall into the opposite 
defect. They are, some of them, pretty 
enough, but they want character. Mr. Fildes's 
pictures for Edwin Drood are a decided im- 
provement. As to the illustrations for the 
later * Household Edition,' they are very in- 
ferior. The designs for a great many are 
clearly bad, and the mechanical execution 
almost uniformly so. Even Mr. Barnard's 
skill has had no fair chance against poor wood- 



CHARLES DICKENS 231 

cutting, careless engraving, and inferior pa- 
per. And this is the more to be regretted, in 
that Mr. Barnard, by natural affinity of talent, 
has, to my thinking, done some of the best art 
work that has been done at all in connection 
with Dickens. His Character Sketches, espe- 
cially the lithographed series, are admirable. 
The Jingle is a masterpiece; but all are good, 
and he even succeeds in making something pic- 
torially acceptable of Little Nell and Little 
Dorrit. 

Just a year, almost to a day, elapsed between 
the conclusion of The Tale of Two Cities, and 
the commencement of Great Expectations. 
The last chapter of the former appeared in the 
number of All the Year Round for the 26th of 
November, 1859, and the first chapter of the 
latter in the number of the same periodical for 
the 1st of December, 1860. Poor Pip — for 
such is the name of the hero of the book — poor 
Pip, I think he is to be pitied. Certainly he 
lays himself open to the charge of snobbish- 
ness, and is unduly ashamed of his connections. 
But then circumstances were decidedly against 
him. Through some occult means he is re- 
moved from his natural sphere, from the care 
of his ' rampageous ' sister, and of her bus- 



232 LIFE OF 

band, the good, kind, honest Joe, and taken up 
to London, and brought up as a gentleman, 
and started in chambers in Barnard's Inn. All 
this is done through the instrumentality of 
Mr. Jaggers, a barrister in highest repute 
among the criminal brotherhood. But Pip not 
unnaturally thinks that his unknown benefac- 
tress is a certain Miss Havisham, who, having 
been bitterly wronged in her love affairs, lives 
in eccentric fashion near his native place, amid 
the mouldering mementoes of her wedding 
day. What is his horror when he finds that his 
education, comfort, and prospects have no 
more reputable foundation than the bounty of 
a murderous criminal called Magwitch, who 
has showered all these benefits upon him from 
the antipodes, in return for the gift of food 
and a file when he, Magwitch, was trying to 
escape from the hulks, and Pip was a little lad. 
Magwitch, the transported convict, comes back 
to England, at the peril of his life, to make 
himself known to Pip, and to have the pleasure 
of looking at that young gentleman. He is 
again tracked by the police, and caught, not- 
withstanding Pip's efforts to get him off, and 
dies in prison. Pip ultimately, very ultimately, 
marries a young lady oddly brought up by the 



CHARLES DICKENS 233 

queer Miss Havisham, and who turns out to 
be IVIagwitch's daughter. 

Such, as I have had occasion to say before 
in speaking of similar analyses, such are the 
dry bones of the story. Pip's character is well 
drawn. So is that of Joe. And Mr. Jaggers, 
the criminal's friend, and his clerk, Wemmick, 
are striking and full of a grim humour. Miss 
Havisham and her protegee, Estella, whom she 
educates to be the scourge of men, belong to 
what may be called the melodramatic side of 
Dickens's art. They take their place with Mrs. 
Dombey and with Miss Dartle in David Cop- 
perfield, and JSIiss Wade in Little Dorrit — fe- 
male characters of a fantastic and haughty 
type, and quite devoid, Miss Dartle and Miss 
Wade especially, of either verisimilitude or the 
milk of human kindness. 

Great Expectations was completed in Au- 
gust, 1861, and the first number of Our Mutual 
Friend appeared in May, 1864. This was an 
unusual interval, but the great writer's faculty 
of invention was beginning to lose its fresh 
spring and spontaneity. And besides he had 
not been idle. Though writing no novel, he 
had been busy enough with readings, and his 
work on All the Year Round. He had also 



234 LIFE OF 

written a short, but very graceful paper ^ on 
Thackeray, whose death, on the Christmas 
Eve of 1863, had greatly affected him. Now, 
however, he again braced himself for one of 
his greater efforts. 

Scarcely, I think, as all will agree, with the 
old success. In Our Mutual Friend he is not 
at his best. It is a strange complicated story 
that seems to have some difficulty in unravel- 
ling itself: the story of a man who pretends 
to be dead in order that he may, under a 
changed name, investigate the character and 
eligibility of the young woman whom an 
erratic father has destined to be his bride; a 
golden-hearted old dust contractor, who hides 
a will that will give him all that erratic father's 
property, and disinherit the man aforesaid, 
and who, to crown his virtues, pretends to be 
a miser in order to teach the young woman, 
also aforesaid, how bad it is to be mercenary, 
and to induce her to marry the unrecognized 
and seemingly penniless son; their marriage 
accordingly, with ultimate result that the 
bridegroom turns out to be no poor clerk, but 
the original heir, who, of course, is not dead, 
and is the inheritor of thousands; subsidiary 

^ See Cornhill Magazine for February, 1 864. 



CHARLES DICKENS 235 

groups of characters, one among which I think 
rather uninteresting, of some brand-new peo- 
ple called the Veneerings and their acquain- 
tances, for they have no friends ; and some fine 
sketches of the river-side population; striking 
and amusing characters too — Silas Wegg, the 
scoundrelly vendor of songs, who ferrets 
among the dust for wills in order to confound 
the good dustman, his benefactor; and the lit- 
tle deformed dolls' dressmaker, with her sot of 
a father; and Betty Higden, the sturdy old 
woman who has determined neither in life nor 
death to suffer the pollution of the workhouse ; 
such, with more added, are the ingredients of 
the story. 

One episode, however, deserves longer com- 
ment. It is briefly this: Eugene Wrayburn 
is a young barrister of good family and educa- 
tion, and of excellent abilities and address, all 
gifts that he has turned to no creditable pur- 
pose whatever. He falls in with a girl, Lizzie 
Hexham, of more than humble rank, but of 
great beauty and good character. She inter- 
ests him, and in mere wanton carelessness, for 
he certainly has no idea of offering marriage, 
he gains her affection, neither meaning, in any 
definite way, to do anything good nor anything 



236 LIFE OF 

bad with it. There is another man who loves 
Lizzie, a schoohnaster, who, in his dull, plod- 
ding way, has made the best of his intellect, 
and risen in life. He naturally, and we may 
say properly, for no good can come of them, 
resents Wrayburn's attentions, as does the 
girl's biother. Wrayburn uses the superior 
advantages of his position to insult them in the 
most offensive and brutal manner, and to tor- 
ture the schoolmaster, just as he has used those 
advantages to win the girl's heart. Where- 
upon, after being goaded to heart's desire for 
a considerable time, the schoolmaster as nearly 
as possible beats out Wrayburn's life, and 
commits suicide. Wrayburn is rescued by 
Lizzie as he lies by the river bank sweltering 
in blood, and tended by her, and they are mar- 
ried and live happy ever afterwards. 

Now the amazing part of this story is, that 
Dickens's sympathies throughout are with 
Wrayburn. How this comes to be so I confess 
I do not know. To me Wrayburn's conduct 
appears to be heartless, cruel, unmanly, and the 
use of his superior social position against the 
schoolmaster to be like a foul blow, and quite 
unworthy of a gentleman. Schoolmasters 
ought not to beat people about the head, de- 



CHARLES DICKENS 237 

cidedly. But if Wrayburn's thoughts took a 
right course during convalescence, I think he 
may have reflected that he deserved his beating, 
and also that the woman whose affection he 
had won was a great deal too good for him. 

Dickens's misplaced sympathy in this par- 
ticular story has, I repeat, always struck me 
with amazement. Usually his sympathies are 
so entirely right. Nothing is more common 
than to hear the accusation of vulgarity made 
against his books. A certain class of people 
seem to think, most mistakenly, that because 
he so often wrote about vulgar people, uned- 
ucated people, people in the lower ranks 
of society, therefore his writing was vulgar, 
nay more, he himself vulgar too. Such an 
opinion can only be based on a strange con- 
fusion between subject and treatment. There 
is scarcely any subject not tainted by impurity, 
that cannot be treated with entire refinement. 
Washington Irving wrote to Dickens, most 
justly, of ' that exquisite tact that enabled him 
to carry his reader through the veriest dens of 
vice and villainy withoi^t a breath to shock the 
ear or a stain to sully the robe of the most 
shrinking delicacy ' ; and added : ' It is a rare 
gift to be able to paint low life without being 



238 LIFE OF 

low, and to be comic without the least taint 
of vulgarity.' This is well said; and if we 
look for the main secret of the inherent refine- 
ment of Dickens's books, we shall find it, I 
think, in this : that he never intentionally pal- 
tered with right and wrong. He would make 
allowance for evil, would take pleasure in 
showing that there were streaks of lingering 
good in its blackness, would treat it kindly, 
gently, humanly. But it always stood for evil, 
and nothing else. He made no attempt by 
cunning jugglery to change its seeming. He 
had no sneaking affection for it. And there- 
fore, I say again, his attachment to Eugene 
Wrayburn has always struck me with surprise. 
As regards Dickens's own refinement, I can- 
not perhaps do better than quote the words of 
Sir Arthur Helps, an excellent judge. ' He 
was very refined in his conversation — at least, 
what I call refined — for he was one of those 
persons in whose society one is comfortable 
from the certainty that they will never say any- 
thing which can shock other people, or hurt 
their feelings, be they ever so fastidious or 
sensitive.* 



• CHARLES DICKENS 239 



© 



CHAPTER XIII 

UT we are now, alas, nearing the point 
where the * rapid ' of Dickens's Hfe 
began to ' shoot to its fall.' The year 
1865, during which he partly wrote Our Mu- 
tual Friend, was a fatal one in his career. In 
the month of February he had been very ill, 
with an affection of the left foot, at first 
thought to be merely local, but which really 
pointed to serious mischief, and never after- 
wards wholly left him. Then, on June 9th, 
when returning from France, where he had 
gone to recruit, he as nearly as possible lost 
his life in a railway accident at Staplehurst. 
A bridge had broken in ; some of the carriages 
fell through, and were smashed; that in which 
Dickens was, hung down the side of the chasm. 
Of courage and presence of mind he never 
showed any lack. They were evinced, on one 
occasion, at the readings, when an alarm of fire 
arose. They shone conspicuous here. He 
quieted two ladies who were in the same com- 
partment of the carriage; helped to extricate 



240 LIFE OF 

them, and others from their perilous position; 
gave such help as he could to the wounded and 
dying; probably was the means of saving the 
life of one man, whom he was the first to hear 
faintly groaning under a heap of wreckage; 
and then, as he tells in the ' postscript ' to the 
book, scrambled back into the carriage to find 
the crumpled MS. of a portion of Our Mutual 
Friend} But even pluck is powerless to pre- 
vent a ruinous shock to the nerves. Though 
Dickens had done so manfully what he had to 
do at the time, he never fully recovered from 
the blow. His daughter tells us how he would 
often, * when travelling home from London, 
suddenly fall into a paroxysm of fear, tremble 
all over, clutch the arms of the railway car- 
riage, large beads of perspiration standing on 
his face, and suffer agonies of terror. . . . 
He had . . . apparently no idea of our 
presence.' And Mr. Dolby tells us also how 
in travelling it was often necessary for him to 
ward off such attacks by taking brandy. 
Dickens had been failing before only too 
surely ; and this accident, like a coward's blow, 
struck him heavily as he fell. 

^ For his own graphic account of the accident, see his 
Letters, 



CHARLES DICKENS 241 

But whether failing or stricken, he bated no 
jot of energy or courage; nay, rather, as his 
health grew weaker, did he redouble the pres- 
sure of his work. I think there is a grandeur 
in the story of the last five years of his life, 
that dwarfs even the tale of his rapid and 
splendid rise. It reads like some antique myth 
of the Titans defying Jove's thunder. There 
is about the man something indomitable and 
heroic. He had, as we have seen, given a 
series of readings in 1858-59; and he gave an- 
other in the years 1861 to 1863 — successful 
enough in a pecuniary sense, but through fail- 
ure of business capacity on the part of the 
manager, entailing on the reader himself a 
great deal of anxiety and worry.^ Now, in 
the spring of 1866, with his left foot giving 
him unceasing trouble, and his nerves shat- 
tered, and his heart in an abnormal state, he 
accepted an offer from Messrs. Chappell to 
read ' in England, Ireland, Scotland, and 
Paris,' for 1500Z.^ and the payment of all ex- 
penses, and then to give forty-two more read- 
ings for 2500Z. Mr. Dolby, who accompanied 
Dickens as business manager in this and the 

^ He computed that he had made 12^000/. by the two 
first series of readir.g's. 



242 LIFE OF 

remaining tours, has told their story in an in- 
teresting volume.^ Of course the wear was 
immense. The readings themselves involved 
enormous fatigue to one who so identified him- 
self with what he read, and, whose whole being 
seemed to vibrate not only with the emotions 
of the characters in his stories, but of the 
audience. Then there was the weariness of 
long railway journeys in all seasons and 
weathers — journeys that at first must have 
been rendered doubly tedious, as he could not 
bear to travel by express trains. Yet, not- 
withstanding failure of strength, notwith- 
standing fatigue, his native gaiety and good 
spirits smile like a gleam of winter sunlight 
over the narrative. As he had been the bright- 
est and most genial of companions in the old 
holiday days when strolling about the country 
with his actor-troupe, so now he was occasion- 
ally as frolic as a boy, dancing a hornpipe in 
the train for the amusement of his companions, 
compounding bowls of punch in which he 
shared but sparingly — for he was really con- 
vivial only in idea — and always considerate 

3 Charles Dickens as I Knew Him. By George 
Dolby. Miss Dickens considers this ' the best and 
truest picture of her father yet written.' 



CHARLES DICKENS 243 

and kindly towards his companions and de- 
pendents. And mingled pathetically with all 
this are confessions of pain, weariness, illness, 
faintness, sleeplessness, internal bleeding, — all 
bravely borne, and never for an instant suf- 
fered to interfere with any business arrange- 
ment. 

But if the strain of the readings was too 
heavy here at home, what was it likely to be 
during a winter in America? Nevertheless he 
determined, against all remonstrances, to go 
thither. It would almost seem as if he felt that 
the day of his life was waning, and that it was 
his duty to gather in a golden harvest for those 
he loved ere the night came on. So he sailed 
for Boston once more on the 9th of November, 
1867. The Americans, it must be said, be- 
haved nobly. All the old grudges connected 
with The American Notes, and Martin Chuz- 
zlewitj sank into oblivion. The reception was 
everywhere enthusiastic, the success of the 
readings immense. Again and again people 
waited all night, amid the rigours of an almost 
arctic winter, in order to secure an opportunity 
of purchasing tickets as soon as the ticket 
office opened. There were enormous and in- 
telligent audiences at Boston, New York, 



244 LIFE OF 

Washington, Philadelphia — everywhere. The 
sum which Dickens realized by the tour, 
amounted to the splendid total of nearly 
19,000Z. Nor, in this money triumph, did he 
fail to excite his usual charm of personal fasci- 
nation, though the public affection and en- 
thusiasm were manifested in forms less 
objectionable and offensive than of old. On 
his birthday, the 7th of February, 1868, he 
says, ' I couldn't help laughing at myself. . . ; 
it was observed so much as though I were a 
little boy.' Flowers, garlands were set about 
his room; there were presents on his dinner- 
table, and in the evening the hall where he read 
was decorated by kindly unknown hands. Of 
public and private entertainment he might 
have had just as much as he chose. 

But to this medal there was a terrible re- 
verse. Travelling from New York to Boston, 
just before Christmas, he took a most disas- 
trous cold, which never left him so long as he 
remained in the country. He was constantly 
faint. He ate scarcely anything. He slept 
very little. Latterly he was so lame, as 
scarcely to be able to walk. Again and again 
it seemed impossible that he should fulfil his 
night's engagement. He was constantly so 



CHARLES DICKENS 245 

exhausted at the conclusion of the reading, 
that he had to lie down for twenty minutes or 
half an hour, ' before he could undergo the 
fatigue even of dressing.' Mr. Dolby lived 
in daily fear lest he should break down alto- 
gether. ' I used to steal into his room,' he 
says, * at all hours of the night and early 
morning, to see if he were awake, or in want 
of anything; always though to find him wide 
awake, and as cheerful and jovial as circum- 
stances would admit — never in the least com- 
plaining, and only reproaching me for not tak- 
ing my night's rest.' ' Only a man of iron will 
could have accomplished what he did,' says 
Mr. Fields, who knew him well, and saw him 
often during the tour. 

In the first week of May, 1868, Dickens was 
back in England, and soon again in the thick 
of his work and play. Mr. Wills, the sub- 
editor of All the Year Round, had met with an 
accident. Dickens supplied his place. Chauncy 
Hare Townshend had asked him to edit a 
chaotic mass of religious lucubrations. He 
toilfully edited them. Then, with the autumn, 
the readings began again; — for it marks the 
indomitable energy of the man that, even amid 
the terrible physical trials incident to his tour 



246 LIFE OF 

in America, he had agreed with Messrs. Chap- 
pell, for a sum of 8000/.^ to give one hundred 
more readings after his return. So in October 
the old work began again, and he was here, 
there, and everywhere, now reading at Man- 
chester and Liverpool, now at Edinburgh and 
Glasgow, anon coming back to read fitfully in 
London, then off again to Ireland, or the 
West of England. Nor is it necessary to say 
that he spared himself not one whit. In order 
to give novelty to these readings, which were 
to be positively the last, he had laboriously got 
up the scene of Nancy's murder, in Oliver 
Twist, and persisted in giving it night after 
night, though of all his readings it was the one 
that exhausted him most terribly.* But of 
course this could not last. The pain in his foot 
* was always recurring at inconvenient and un- 
expected moments,' says Mr. Dolby, and occa- 
sionally the American cold caipe back too. In 
February, in London, the foot was worse than 
it had ever been, so bad that Sir Henry Thomp- 

* Mr. Dolby remonstrated on this, and it was in con- 
nection with a very slight show of temper on the oc- 
casion that he says : 'In all my experiences with the 
Chief that was the only time I ever heard him address 
angry words to any one.' 



CHARLES DICKENS 247 

son, and Mr. Beard, his medical adviser, 
compelled him to postpone a reading. At 
Edinburgh, a few days afterwards, Mr. 
Syme, the eminent surgeon, strongly recom- 
mended perfect rest. Still he battled on, but 
' with great personal suffering such as few 
men could have endured.' Sleeplessness was 
on him too. And still he fought on, deter- 
mined, if it were physically possible, to fulfil 
his engagement with Messrs. Chappell, and 
complete the hundred nights. But it was not 
to be. Symptoms set in that pointed alarm- 
ingly towards paralysis of the left side. At 
Preston, on the 22d of April, Mr. Beard, 
who had come post-haste from London, put a 
stop to the readings, and afterwards decided, 
in consultation with Sir Thomas Watson, that 
they ought to be suspended entirely for the 
time, and never resumed in connection with 
any railway travelling. 

Even this, however, was not quite the end; 
for a summer of comparative rest, or what 
Dickens considered rest, seemed so far to have 
set him up that he gave a final series of twelve 
readings in London between the 11th of Jan- 
uary and 15th of March, 1870, thus bringing 
to its real conclusion an enterprise by which, at 



248 LIFE OF 

whatever cost to himself, he had made a sum 
of about 45,000Z. 

Meanwhile, in the autumn of 1869, he had 
gone back to the old work, and was writing a 
novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It is 
a good novel unquestionably. Without going 
so far as Longfellow, who had doubts whether 
it was not ' the most beautiful of all ' Dickens's 
works, one may admit that there is about it a 
singular freshness, and no sign at all of mental 
decay. As for the ' mystery,' I do not think 
that need baffle us altogether. But then I see 
no particular reason to believe that Dickens 
had wished to baffle us, or specially to rival 
Edgar Allen Poe or Mr. Wilkie Collins in the 
construction of criminal puzzles. Even though 
only half the case is presented to us, and the 
book remains forever unfinished, we need have, 
I think, no difficulty in working out its con- 
clusion. The course pursued by Mr. Jasper, 
Lay Precentor of the Cathedral at Cloister- 
ham, is really too suspicious. No intelligent 
British jury, seeing the facts as they are pre- 
sented to us, the readers, could for a moment 
think of acquitting him of the murder of his 
nephew, Edwin Drood. Take these facts 
seriatim. First, we have the motive: he is 



CHARLES DICKENS 249 

passionately in love with the girl to whom his 
nephew is engaged. Then we have a terrible 
coil of compromising circumstances : his extrav- 
agant profession of devotion to his nephew, his 
attempts to establish a hidden influence over 
the girl's mind to his nephew's detriment and 
his own advantage, his gropings amid the dark 
recesses of the Cathedral and inquiries into the 
action of quicklime, his endeavours to foment 
a quarrel between Edwin Drood and a fiery- 
young gentleman from Ceylon, on the night 
of the murder, and his undoubted doctoring of 
the latter's drink. Then, after the murder, 
how damaging is his conduct. He falls into 
a kind of fit on discovering that his nephew's 
engagement had been broken off, which he 
might well do if his crime turned out to be not 
only a crime but also a blunder. And his con- 
duct to the girl is, to say the least of it, strange. 
Nor will his character help him. He frequents 
the opium dens of the east end of London. 
Guilty, guilty, most certainly guilty. There 
is nothing to be said in arrest of judgment. 
Let the judge put on the black cap, and Jasper 
be devoted to his merited doom. 

Such was the story that Dickens was un- 
ravelling in the spring and early summer of 



250 LIFE OF 

1870. And fortune smiled upon it. He had 
sold the copyright for the large sum of 7500/.^ 
and a half share of the profits after a sale of 
twenty-five thousand copies, plus lOOOZ. for 
the advance sheets sent to America; and 
the sale was more than answering his expec- 
tations. 

Nor did prosperity look favourably on the 
book alone. It also, in one sense, showered 
benefits on the author. He was worth, as the 
evidence of the Probate Court was to show 
only too soon, a sum of over 80,000Z. He was 
happy in his children. He was universally 
loved, honoured, courted. * Troops of friends,' 
though, alas ! death had made havoc among the 
oldest, were still his. Never had man exhibited 
less inclination to pay fawning court to great- 
ness and social rank. Yet when the Queen ex- 
pressed a desire to see him, as she did in March, 
1870, he felt not only pride, but a gentleman's 
pleasure in acceding to her wish, and came 
away charmed from a long chatting interview. 
But, while prosperity was smiling thus, the 
shadows of his day of life were lengthening, 
lengthening, and the night was at hand. 

On Wednesday, June 8th, he seemed in ex- 
cellent spirits; worked all the morning in the 



CHARLES DICKENS 251 

Chalet ^ as was his wont, returned to the house 
for lunch and a cigar, and then, being anxious 
to get on with Edwin Drood, went back to his 
desk once more. The weather was superb. All 
round the landscape lay in fullest beauty of 
leafage and flower, and the air rang musically 
with the song of birds. What were his 
thoughts that summer day as he sat there at 
his work ? Writing many years before, he had 
asked whether the ' subtle liquor of the blood ' 
may not ' perceive, by properties within itself,' 
when danger is imminent, and so ' run cold and 
dull ' ? Did any such monitor within, one won- 
ders, warn him at all that the hand of death 
was uplifted to strike, and that its shadow lay 
upon him? Judging from the words that fell 
from his pen that day we might almost think 
that it was so — we might almost go further, 
and guess with what hopes and fears he looked 
into the darkness beyond. Never at any time 
does he appear to have been greatly troubled 

^ The Chalet, since sold and removed, stood at the 
edge of a kind of ' wilderness,' which is separated from 
Gad's Hill Place by the high road. A tunnel, con- 
structed by Dickens, connects the wilderness and the 
garden of the house. Close to the road, in the wilder- 
ness, and fronting the house, are two fine cedars. 



252 LIFE OF 

by speculative doubt. There is no evidence in 
his life, no evidence in his letters, no evidence 
in his books, that he had ever seen any cause to 
question the truth of the reply which Chris- 
tianity gives to the world-old problems of 
man's origin and destiny. For abstract specu- 
lation he had not the slightest turn or taste. 
In no single one of his characters does he ex- 
hibit any fierce mental struggle as between 
truth and error. All that side of human ex- 
perience, with its anguish of battle, its de- 
spairs, and its triumphs, seems to have been 
unknown to him. Perhaps he had the stronger 
grasp of other matters in consequence — who 
knows? But the fact remains. With a trust 
quite simple and untroubled, he held through 
life to the faith of Christ. When his children 
were little, he had written prayers for them, 
had put the Bible into simpler language for 
their use. In his will, dated May 12, 1869, he 
had said, ' I commit my soul to the mercy of 
God through our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ, and I exhort my dear children humbly 
to try to guide themselves by the broad teach- 
ing of the New Testament in its broad spirit, 
and to put no faith in any man's narrow con- 
struction of its letter here or there.' And now, 



CHARLES DICKENS 253 

on this last day of his life, in probably the last 
letter that left his pen, he wrote to one who had 
objected to some passage in Edwin Drood as 
irreverent : * I have always striven in my writ- 
ings to express veneration for the life and 
lessons of our Saviour — because I feel it.' 
And with a significance, of which, as I have 
said, he may himself have been dimly half- 
conscious, among the last words of his un- 
finished story, written that very afternoon, are 
words that tell of glorious summer sunshine 
transfiguring the city of his imagination, and 
of the changing lights, and the song of birds, 
and the incense from garden and meadow that 
* penetrate into the cathedral ' of Cloisterham, 
' subdue its earthy odour, and preach the 
Resurrection and the Life.' 

For now the end had come. When he went 
in to dinner Miss Hogarth noticed that he 
looked very ill, and wished at once to send for 
a doctor. But he refused, struggled for a 
short space against the impending fit, and tried 
to talk, at last very incoherently. Then, when 
urged to go up to his bed, he rose, and, almost 
immediately, slid from her supporting arm, 
and fell on the floor. Nor did consciousness 
return. He passed from the unrest of life 



254 LIFE OF 

into the peace of eternity on the following day, 
June 9, 1870, at ten minutes past six in the 
evening. 

And now he lies in Westminster Abbey, 
among the men who have most helped, by deed 
or thought, to make this England of ours what 
it is. Dean Stanley only gave effect to the 
national voice when he assigned to him that 
place of sepulture. The most popular, and in 
most respects the greatest novelist of his time; 
the lord over the laughter and tears of a whole 
generation; the writer, in his own field of fic- 
tion, whose like we shall probably not see again 
for many a long, long year, if ever; where 
could he be laid more fittingly for his last long 
sleep than in the hallowed resting-place which 
the country sets apart for the most honoured 
of her children? 

So he lies there among his peers in the 
Southern Transept. Close beside him sleep 
Dr. Johnson, the puissant literary autocrat of 
his own time ; and Garrick, who was that time's 
greatest actor ; and Handel, who may fittingly 
claim to have been one of the mightiest musi- 
cians of all time. There sleeps, too, after the 
fitful fever of his troubled life, the witty, the 
eloquent Sheridan. In close proximity rests 



CHARLES DICKENS 255 

Macaulay, the artist-historian and essayist. 
Within the radius of a few yards lies all that 
will ever die of Chaucer, who five hundred 
years ago sounded the spring note of English 
literature, and gave to all after-time the best, 
brightest glimpse into mediaeval England ; and 
all that is mortal also of Spenser of the honey'd 
verse; and of Beaumont, who had caught an 
echo of Shakespeare's sweetness if not his 
power; and of sturdy Ben Jonson, held in his 
own day a not unworthy rival of Shakespeare's 
self; and of ' glorious ' and most masculine 
John Dryden. From his monument Shake- 
speare looks upon the place with his kindly 
eyes, and Addison too, and Goldsmith; and 
one can almost imagine a smile of fellowship 
upon the marble faces of those later dead — 
Burns, Coleridge, Southey, and Thackeray. 

Nor in that great place of the dead does 
Dickens enjoy cold barren honour alone. 
Nearly seventeen years have gone by since he 
was laid there — yes, nearly seventeen years, 
though it seems only yesterday that I was lis- 
tening to the funeral sermon in which Dean 
Stanley spoke of the simple and sufficient 
faith in which he had lived and died. But 
though seventeen years have gone by, yet 



256 . LIFE OF 

are outward signs not wanting of the peculiar 
love that clings to him still. As I strolled 
through the Abbey this last Christmas Eve, I 
found his grave, and his grave alone, made gay 
with the season's hollies. ' Lord, keep my 
memory green,' — in another sense than he 
used the words, that prayer is answered. 

And of the future what shall we say? His 
fame had a brilliant day while he lived; it has 
a brilliant day now. Will it fade into twilight, 
without even an afterglow; will it pass alto- 
gether into the night of oblivion? I cannot 
think so. The vitality of Dickens's works is 
singularly great. They are all a-throb, as it 
were, with hot human blood. They are popular 
in the highest sense because their appeal is uni- 
versal, to the uneducated as well as the edu- 
cated. The humour is superb, and most of it, 
so far as one can judge, of no ephemeral kind. 
The pathos is more questionable, but that too, 
at its simplest and best, and especially when 
the humour is shot with it — is worthy of a bet- 
ter epithet than excellent. It is supremely 
touching. Imagination, fancy, wit, eloquence, 
the keenest observation, the most strenuous en- 
deavour to reach the highest artistic excellence, 
the largest kindliness, — all these he brought to 



CHARLES DICKENS 257 

his life-work. And that work, as I think, will 
live, I had almost dared to prophesy for ever. 
Of course fashions change. Of course no 
writer of fiction, writing for his own little day, 
can permanently meet the needs of all after 
times. Some loss of immediate vital interest is 
inevitable. Nevertheless, in Dickens's case, all 
will not die. Half a century, a century hence, 
he will still be read ; not perhaps as he was read 
when his words flashed upon the world in their 
first glory and freshness, nor as he is read now 
in the noon of his fame. But he will be read 
much more than we read the novelists of the 
last century — be read as much, shall I say, as 
we still read Scott. And so long as he is read, 
there will be one gentle and humanizing influ- 
ence the more at work among men. 



INDEX 



" Administrative Reform " 
agitation, 211 

All the Year Round, 191, 192 

America, Dickens's first visit 
to United States in 1842, 
132, 135-147, 163, 164; sec- 
ond visit in 1867-8, 243-245 

American Notes, 128, 144-146 



Barnahy Budge, 106, 130, 183 

Barnard, Mr., his illustrations 
to Dickens's works, 230 

Battle of Life, 177 

Bentley's Miscellany edited 
by Dickens, 102, 105 

Bleak House, 194-198 

Boulogne, 198, 199 

Bret Harte, Mr., on Little 
Nell, 121 

Browne, or " Phiz," his illus- 
trations to Dickens's works, 
227-230 

C 

Carlyle, his description of 
Dickens quoted, 83; and of 
Dickens's reading, 204-205 ; 
his influence on Dickens, 



207-208; see also 170 and 

226 
Chapman and Hall, 90, 91, 92, 

93, 105, 118 
Chatham, 52 
Childhood, Dickens's feeling 

for its pathos, 51, 120 
Child's History of England, 

191 
Chimes, 110, 167-170, 229 
Christmas Carol, 159-161, 205 
Christopher North, 133 
Cowden Clarke, Mrs., quoted, 

185 
Cruikshank, his illustrations 

in Sketches and Oliver 

Twist, 227-230 

D 

Daily News, started with 
Dickens as editor, 171, 172, 
175, 190 

David Copperfleld — in many 
respects autobiographical, 
53-56, 63, 217; analysis of, 
120, 128, 187-189 

Dick, Mr., 181, 182, 183 

Dickens, Charles, birth, 50; 
childhood and boyhood, 50- 
71 ; school experiences, 68- 
70; law experiences, 72, 73; 



959 



260 



INDEX 



experiences as reporter for 
the press, 73, 75; first at- 
tempts at authorship, 77- 
81; marriage, 81; his per- 
sonal appearance in early 
manhood, 83, 84; influence 
of his early training, 84- 
89; pecuniary position after 
publication of Pickwick, 
105,106; habits of work and 
relaxation, 109-111; re- 
ception at Edinburgh, 132- 
134; American experiences, 
135-146; afi'ection for h5s 
children, 148, 149; Italian 
experiences, 162-170; ap- 
pointed editor of Daily 
News, 171, 172; efficiency in 
practical matters, 174, 175; 
his charm as a holiday 
companion, 185; first pub- 
lic readings in 1853, 200; 
character of his reading, 
204-206; purchase of Gad's 
Hill Place, 214-216; sepa- 
ration from his wife, 216- 
224; general love in which 
he was held, 220, 221; ten- 
dency to caricature in his 
art, 229; essential refine- 
ment in his writing and in 
himself, 237, 238; his pres- 
ence of mind, 239-240; his 
brave battle against failing 
strength, 239-247 ; with 
what thoughts he faced 
death, 252, 253; his death. 



253-254; resting-place in 
Westminster Abbey, 254- 
256; love that clings to his 
memory, 256; future of his 
fame, 256-257 

Dickens, John, his character, 
56-58; his imprisonment, 
64-65; his death, 192 

Dickens, Miss, biography of 
her father, quoted, 104, 148, 
240 

Dickens, Mrs., (Dickens's 
mother), 67, 68 

Dickens, Mrs., 147; sepa- 
rated from her husband, 
216-224 

Dolby, Mr., manager for the 
readings, 240, 241, 245 

Dombey and Son, 120, 176- 
180, 186 

Dombey, Paul, 120, 123-124, 
128, 179 

E 

Edinburgh, Dickens's recep- 
tion there, 132-134 
Edwin Drood, 230, 248-251 

F 

Fildes, Mr. L., A.R.A., illus- 
trates Edwin Drood, 230 

Elite, Miss, 182, 183 

Forster, John, 60, 87, 170, 
193; his opinion on the ad- 
visability of public read- 
ings, 200-201 



INDEX 



261 



Gad's Hill Place, 52; pur- 
chase of, 214, 215, 216 

Genoa, 109, 110, 165-166, 169, 
170 

Grant, Mr. James, 93 

Great Expectations, 121, 231- 
233 

H 

Hard Times, 207-211 

Haunted Man, The, 186 

Helps, Sir Arthur, on 
Dickens's powers of obser- 
vation, 79; on his essential 
refinement, 238 

Hogarth, Mary, her death 
and character, 106-107 

Home, on description of 
Little Nell's death and 
burial, 66, 122 

Household Words, 190-192, 
218 

Humour of Dickens, 79, 80, 
97, 98, 99, 229, 256 



Italy in 1844, 163-165 

J 

Jeffrey, his opinion of Little 



Nell, 121, 133 



Landor, his admiration for 
Little Nell, 121 ; his likeness 
to Mr. Boy thorn, 198 

Lausanne, 175, 177 



Leigh Hunt, 197 

Little Dorrit, 64, 212-215, 

229-231 
Little Nell, criticism on her 

character and story, 120- 

126, 133, 135 
London, Dickens's knowledge 

of, and walks in, 79, 109- 

111 

M 

Macaulay, 144, 210, 255 
Macready, the tragic actor, 

135, 138, 147, 148 
Marshalsea Prison, Dickens's 

father imprisoned there, 

55, 61, 63-66; made the 

chief scene of Little Dorrit, 

213 
Martin Chvzzlewit, 151-152, 

156-158 
Master Humphrey's Clock, 

118, 119, 158, 228 
Micawber, Mr., 54, 56, 64 

N 
Nickleby, Mrs., 68 
Nicholas Nickleby, 1(^, 115- 
117, 158 



Old Curiosity Shop, 117, 119- 

129 
Oliver Twist, 103, 105, 112- 

115, 120, 228 
Our Mutual Friend, 162, 230, 

234-237 



262 INDEX " "^//^'^ 

P Sketches by Boz, 78-81, 106, 

Paris, 184, 214 227, 228 

Pathos of Dickens, 80, 81, Stanley, Dean, 254, 255 

126-128, 256 Stone, Mr. Marcus, R.A., il- 

Pickwick, 90-101, 102, 104, lustrates Our Mutual 

158, 228 Friend, 230 

Pictures from Italy, 172-173 

Pipchin, Mrs., 62, 66 j. 

Plots, Dickens's, 151-156 „ . „ , . 

laine, M., his criticism criti- 

cised, 181-183 

^ Tale of Two Cities, 225-227 

Quarterly Review foretells Thackeray, 108, 220, 234; as 

Dickens's speedy downfall, ^ reader, 204, 206 

^^^' ^^* Tiny Tim, 128, 205 

Toots, Mr., 181, 182 
R 

Readings, Dickens's, 200-206, 

241-247 

Ruskin, Mr., his opinion of ^ates, Edmund, Mr., quoted. 

Hard Times, 210 ^^"• 

S Wi 
Sam Weller, 99, 100 Washington, Irving, 135, 237 
Scott, Sir Walter, 95, 155, 257 Westminster Abbey, Dick- 
Seymour, his connection with ens's place of burial, 254- 
Pickwick, 90, 92, 228 256 



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